Missing
by inkstainedfingers97
Summary: He wasn't sure what was worse, knowing what state she was likely to be in when they finally found her, or knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything that had happened to her was completely his fault.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Missing

Rating: T - Includes some violent themes and sexual situations, but nothing too graphic.

Spoilers: Mid-way through season 4, I guess, but nothing really specific.

Disclaimer: This is for fun and no money.

A/N: Shameless hurt/comfort fic. I actually wrote this ages ago but never got around to editing it and breaking it into chapters til now. Figured I would post it now to help us get through all the intensity that has been season 6 so far. After last week's episode, I think everyone could use a little Sweet!Jane to remind us why we love him so much. Hope this will do the trick. This fic is twelve chapters total; the early ones are pretty short but they get longer as we go along. Giving you two chapters tonight because the first one is more like a prologue.

Lisbon had been missing for five days before they found her.

A man named Kevin Taggart had taken her. She'd gone to interview him about a case relating to three known homicides in which the killer kidnapped his victims and held them hostage, beating them for days before finally breaking their necks and dumping their bodies by the side of the road. She'd gone to interview him, and she hadn't come back.

She'd wanted Jane to go with her. To placate her, he'd said he would, but privately he thought interviewing Taggart was a waste of time, and he'd skipped out on her at the last minute to pursue his own interests. Lisbon wanted to check Taggart out because he had a couple of priors that indicated a history of violence and a connection to the first victim. Jane, on the other hand, had been intrigued by a sinister air he'd sensed from the headmaster of the college that all three victims had attended at one point in their lives, and had felt his time would be much better spent springing a trap for the head of school. He had left Lisbon a message telling her where he was going, and wishing her luck on her 'destined to be fruitless' interview. He could imagine her listening to his message with a huff of exasperation, and then climbing into the SUV to go interview Taggart by herself. As a result, he'd found himself with a headmaster on his hands who had no more sinister proclivities than trying to conceal an affair from his wife, and Lisbon's empty SUV found in front of Taggart's abandoned apartment.

He wasn't sure what was worse, knowing what state she was likely to be in when they finally found her, or knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything that had happened to her was completely his fault.


	2. Chapter 2

It was Grace who found her.

None of the team had been home for longer than a few hours since they'd first realized that she'd gone missing, but nothing they'd done had brought them any closer to finding her. Cho and Rigsby re-interviewed everyone associated with the case and had interviewed anyone with any known connections to Kevin Taggart. Grace stayed hunched over her computer, pausing only to rub her eyes every so often to relieve the strain of staring at the screen for hours on end.

Jane had been able to contribute nothing. He had no scheme or clever plot hidden up his sleeve, this time. He'd gone with Cho and Rigsby on the interviews, to see if he could glean anything useful, but nothing had occurred to him. He couldn't think of a single place Lisbon might have been taken. He couldn't focus properly, that was the problem. He was too consumed with fear for Lisbon's life.

Dozens of scenarios played themselves over and over in his head, each more dismal than the last. He thought of finding her beaten, cut, and bruised. He couldn't help himself. He had trouble breathing, thinking of it all. He sat frozen on his couch, trying to remind himself how to breathe through paralyzed lungs.

"Guys," Grace interrupted his thoughts, and there was a buzz of excitement in her voice that made him sit straighter and take heed. "I think I've found them."

He was by her side in a flash, and the others were not far behind him, peering over her shoulder at her monitor, displaying the deed to an old cabin up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. "Taggart's ex-wife's parents had a house up by Donner Lake," Grace informed them. "They're deceased, and so is the wife, but someone's still paying property taxes on the house. What if that's where he's taken her?"

xxx

It took them an hour and a half to drive what was normally a two hour drive up to Donner Lake, despite the icy roads. Cho pushed the gas pedal to the floor and Rigsby clutched the armrests of his seat with white knuckles. Jane heard Grace muttering prayers under her breath, but they were unrelated to Cho's driving. They were for Lisbon. Jane sat in the back, staring out the window and wishing Cho could drive faster.

The scene at the cabin, when they found it, was nothing less than horrific. Jane took it in at a glance—the overturned furniture, the broken glass, the signs of extended captivity, and the blood on the floor—and left. He'd seen all that he needed to see.

Lisbon was gone.

Jane went out the back door, his eyes on the snow covering the ground as he wove his way through the trees. It wasn't a difficult path to follow. She'd obviously been having trouble moving through the deep snow, but even if she hadn't left blatant footprints, the blood trail was pretty clear.

She must have figured out a way to escape her bonds. She'd gotten free, somehow, and she and Taggart had had a physical altercation. She'd wounded him badly, but her victory came at a heavy cost, because he managed to spill quite enough of her blood to severely weaken her. She'd fled out the back door, but he'd still been alive—injured, but still with enough strength to follow her. They'd both floundered through the snow, leaving twin trails of blood in their wake.

Jane didn't pause when he came across the first body, but noted dispassionately that it was a good thing for Taggart that he was already dead. If he'd have been alive, Jane would have eviscerated him slowly and painfully. As it was, it looked like he'd only lasted about five minutes after Lisbon had landed her final blow against him. Pity. He deserved to have suffered longer. Jane left him lying facedown in the snow and continued doggedly on.

She'd made it about fifteen minutes longer than Taggart. He stopped when he found her, frozen. She was lying on her back in a snowbank, her eyes closed, her face a waxy white, and the skin around her lips and fingers cast with a ghostly bluish tinge. The snow around her was dark with blood.

No. This couldn't be happening to him. Not again.

For one interminable moment, he stood there in shock and quiet horror, unable to process the thought of a future without her, yawning like an endless chasm stretching before him.

Then Cho rushed past him and knelt down beside his boss. He ripped his gloves off and pressed his fingers to her neck. "Stop looking like that, man," he said sharply to Jane. "She's alive." He turned to Rigsby, who was coming up behind them. "Go get the paramedics," he ordered.

Rigsby nodded and took off at a dead run back the way they had come.

Jane's head snapped around and he stared at Cho. "She's alive?" he said uncertainly. His voice sounded like that of a lost child.

"Yes," Cho said shortly. "But she won't be for long if we can't get her warm. She's hypothermic."

"She's alive," Jane repeated. Then the meaning of the words caught up to him and he fell to his knees beside her. He touched her face, her hands, her lips, to reassure himself that the words were true.

Then he promptly lay down in the snow and pulled her on top of him, opening his coat to wrap it around her as best he could. He took her icy hands and tucked them inside his shirt, against his chest.

"You probably shouldn't have moved her," Cho commented, watching this spectacle. "She's lost a lot of blood and you don't know what caused it."

"Skin on skin contact is the best way of warming up someone who is hypothermic," Jane said, teeth chattering as the wet snow seeped into his back.

Cho shook his head. "Is making yourself hypothermic as well also part of the cure?" he asked. But he took off his own coat and laid it over the two of them while they waited for the paramedics to arrive.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Thanks for all the lovely reviews for the first two chapters- you guys are the best!

A/N 2: In addition to borrowing characters that do not belong to me, I also stole a bit of dialogue from the West Wing in this chapter, but I'm not sure if anyone but the most die hard Josh/Donna shippers will notice it. :) Enjoy!

xxxx

They had some trouble getting Jane to let go of her when the paramedics arrived, but Cho flatly reminded him that all the body heat in the world wasn't going to do her much good if she died of blood loss, and Jane was reluctantly persuaded to release her into their care.

There was another minor scuffle when they loaded her into the ambulance and Jane realized they weren't intending to let him ride with her.

Cho intervened again. "He's her husband," he told the paramedics, his impassive face brooking no argument. "Let him ride with her."

Jane held her hand the whole way there.

Twenty minutes later, they were in Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee, California, and Lisbon was being wheeled away from him on a gurney.

He collapsed onto a chair in the waiting room and stared at the horrible watercolor on the wall opposite him. The team showed up not long afterwards, having left the local police to process the scene and deal with Taggart's body. Grace sat down next to him and took his hand in hers. He let her. It was surprisingly comforting.

xxx

Lisbon had six broken ribs, a broken wrist, and several stab wounds, the most serious of which had resulted in a lacerated kidney. Plus the hypothermia. In addition to all this, she had bruises scattered over every inch of her body, was dehydrated, and mildly malnourished.

In other words, she had been through absolute hell, because of him.

Jane sat by her bed and watched her. Her cheekbones stood out as sharp edges, made sharper by contrast to the hollows in her cheeks. She had a cut high on one cheek, and her face was swollen slightly on that side from where Taggart had hit her. Her neck had finger shaped bruises along the side, where the man had tried to strangle her after she'd gotten free from her restraints. Another bruise marred her temple. Jane drank in the evidence of her pain, so that when she woke up he wouldn't be tempted to believe her when she started to deny it, which she would undoubtedly do almost immediately. That she would wake up, he was certain. Having stared the alternative in the face, he could accept the possibility of no other outcome. He simply would not permit it.

He sat by her bed for four days, willing her to wake up. Grace brought him sandwiches which he left untouched. She switched to soup, and he managed to choke some of it down because he needed at least a little energy to keep him upright if he was going to manage the task of keeping Lisbon alive with the force of his will. The rest of the team sat with him part of the time, but his vigil was relentless. The hospital staff left him alone, after the first attempt at dislodging him from her side. No one was brave enough to face that again, and as long as he was left in peace to sit quietly by her side, he wasn't too much trouble, really.

He held her hand much of the time, taking comfort in the sensation of her small hand pressed against his. He wrapped his fingers around her good arm to feel the pulse in her tiny wrist beat against his fingertips whenever he needed extra reassurance that she really was alive.

Xxx

It wasn't like in the movies, when she woke up. In the movies, she would have slowly blinked herself awake, and his name would have fallen from her lips in a soft whisper as she turned to look at him. He would have raised his head and tears of joy would have filled his eyes as he gazed at her, and he would have vowed to himself that he would confess his feelings to her as soon as she was well.

Instead, she woke with a gasp and a start and started to claw at the intubator down her throat in a panic. Jane, startled half to death, started yelling his head off for the nurses, having no idea what to do to help her. She succeeded in dislodging the intubator, but the moment it was out she started to cough violently. When the nurse got there, it was just in time for her to place a basin in front of her as she leaned over and started vomiting bile into it.

Jane stood by helplessly, his hand fluttering uselessly at her shoulder and finally dropping to his side as he realized there was nothing he could do.

When she was finally resettled in her bed, sans intubator, and the nurse had given her a piece of ice to suck on, she turned her head to the side and squinted at Jane.

"What happened to you?" she rasped, her voice raw and hoarse.

He stared at her. "What happened to _me_?"

"You look awful."

He laughed humorlessly. "Nothing happened to me. Except that you took ten years off my life, woman. Plus another five just now. At least."

"You need a shower and a shave." She wrinkled her nose. "You don't smell so good."

"If I promise to remedy that, will you promise not to do anything else in the next half an hour that may cause me to have heart failure?"

She nodded. "Why do I feel like I've been tackled by the Bears' entire first string lineup?" she asked.

Jane's heart skittered unevenly in his chest as he considered the horrific possibility that the trauma she'd experienced had been so great that it had obscured her memories.

"Oh, yeah," she remembered. "Taggart." She scowled. "The bastard shot me with an animal tranquilizer when I was halfway up his front walk."

"He's dead," Jane told her.

She nodded, but a shadow passed over her eyes nonetheless. His Teresa hated the idea of taking a life, even if it was necessary for her own survival. He knew that the fact that she had taken one, no matter how deserving the victim, would weigh heavily on her. "How long have I been out?"

"Four days," he informed her.

"Four days?" she repeated incredulously. "Jesus. He really did a number on me, didn't he?"

"Yeah," he whispered. "He did."

She must have read something in his face about how this had affected him, because she narrowed her eyes at him. "Have you been here this whole time?"

He nodded wordlessly.

Her eyebrows climbed upwards. "Oh." She looked away. "Well, uh… thanks."

He said nothing. He couldn't bear to be thanked by her, not for this. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for his cell phone and held it aloft. "I've got to call the rest of the team. They'll want to know you're awake."

He exited hastily, not wanting to see the frown of confusion on her face.

xxx

When he returned, he was freshly showered and wearing hospital scrubs. He'd sent his suit out to be cleaned and bought three pairs of new underwear from the hospital gift shop. They had trout on them. He wondered idly why the hospital gift shop even stocked men's underwear, and why, if they did, they would choose ones with such a garish theme.

Lisbon opened her eyes groggily when he came back into her room. "Tha's better," she slurred, reaching up to pat him on the cheek when he sat down beside her. This was rather demonstrative behavior for Lisbon, who thought of every innocent touch beyond the most professional handshake as a potential breach of her formidable defenses. However, he wasn't complaining. He took her hand in his and kissed the palm. He rubbed his other hand over his freshly shaven face and looked into her dilated eyes. They'd doped her to the gills, he realized.

She frowned at him. "What are you wearing?"

"Hospital scrubs and fish underwear," he told her.

Her frown deepened, but the drugs were already taking hold of her once more. "What?" Then she passed out again.

He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. "Sleep well, Lisbon."

Xxx

When she opened her eyes again, Jane's head was propped up against his hand and he was drooling slightly in his sleep. She looked at him affectionately, feeling perversely pleased that he was a drooler. Good. It wouldn't kill him not to be so annoyingly physically perfect in this one area.

He blinked himself awake under her scrutiny.

"Hey," she greeted him.

He smiled at her. "Hey, yourself."

She surveyed him critically. "When was the last time you ate something?"

His stomach growled traitorously in response to her inquiry. "No idea," he yawned. "Why, are you hungry?"

"A little," she admitted. "I don't think I can eat much of anything with a consistency more solid than Jello until at least tomorrow, though."

"Yet I'm sensing you'd prefer not to consume anything in that particular shade of radioactive green, am I right?"

"Yes," she said, pleased at his intuition for once. "Think you can scare up something for us to eat?"

He grinned. "Your wish is my command."

He turned to leave, but she stopped him. "Wait."

He turned around. "Yes?"

"Did you say something about fish underwear?"

"Maybe."

"What does that even mean?"

"The underwear that I bought at the hospital gift shop has fish on them," he informed her. "Trout, to be specific."

Her face split into a wide smile. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

She eyed him speculatively. "Can I see them?"

He stared at her. What kind of drugs were they giving her? "You want to see my underwear?"

"Yes."

"I'm not sure that's the best idea."

"Oh, come on, Jane, I'm injured and stuck in this hospital bed. I'm in need of entertainment."

He considered this, and then shrugged. "Very well." He dipped the waistband of his scrubs an inch or two lower than they normally would have ridden and showed her the edge of his trout boxers.

She peered down at them. "Nice."

Which of course was when Cho, Rigsby, and Van Pelt entered the room.

"Hey guys," Lisbon said cheerfully. "Jane was just showing me his fish underwear."

"His what?" Rigsby said, confused.

"His fish underwear," she repeated. "Jane, show Cho your fish underwear."

Jane turned to Cho, prepared to oblige her, but Cho cut him off with a look. "Do not show me anything, man. I don't want to see your fish underwear."

"I'd like to see the fish underwear," Van Pelt piped up, looking at Jane with a roguish grin. But at a look from Rigsby, she blushed and muttered something about a rain check.

"How are you feeling?" Cho asked Lisbon, folding his arms across his chest.

"Like I've been trampled by a herd of cattle," she said ruefully.

He nodded. "I'm glad you're all right. We were pretty worried about you."

This incredible understatement brought on an uncomfortable pause. Lisbon fidgeted. "Yeah, well. Thanks for finding me. You guys saved my life."

Cho shook his head. "You saved yourself. We just took you to the hospital."

"Which saved my life," she said patiently. "Thanks."

Cho looked her in the eye. "I'm sorry we didn't get there sooner."

She shrugged awkwardly, though it was clear the movement caused her some pain. "Nothing you could have done."

Jane winced. There was something he could have done. If only he'd gone with her to that damn interview.

"I brought you some of your things," Van Pelt told her.

"Thanks, Van Pelt," Lisbon said gratefully. "That's great. I really appreciate it."

Van Pelt turned to Jane. "I brought you some things, too. But I didn't bring you any of your suits, or anything. I couldn't find an address for you in the CBI database." She sounded a bit reproachful about that, as though he'd purposefully thwarted her thoughtful gesture by not keeping his address on file. "I just got you some jeans and stuff."

"Thanks, Grace," he said sincerely.

"Don't thank me too much. They're from Wal-Mart." She frowned. "I hope they fit."

"I'm sure it will be fine," he said. "It was very sweet of you to do that."

"Are you staying, then?" Rigsby asked Jane.

Van Pelt elbowed him in the ribs and Lisbon looked very interested in a stray thread poking out of the bedclothes.

"Yes," Jane told him. "I'm staying."

Van Pelt sighed a barely audible sigh of relief, and Cho's face became slightly less impassive.

Van Pelt turned back to Lisbon. "Is there anything we can do for you, while we're here, boss?"

Lisbon hesitated. "Well—yeah, actually. I would kill to get my hair washed and the nurses have been so busy I haven't wanted to ask them. I was hoping maybe I could get some help with that."

Jane got up without thinking. "Yeah, of course. I should have thought of that." Of course she would want to get cleaned up. He could have kicked himself for not anticipating that. He knew Lisbon hated to ask for favors.

Lisbon and the rest of the team stared at him. "Uh…" Lisbon said finally. "I actually meant Van Pelt." She smirked. "But thanks for the offer."

"Oh," Jane said stupidly. He shook his head. "Right. Of course."

Van Pelt shot him an unreadable look and helped Lisbon to the bathroom. Jane stared after them.

Cho clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Easy there, tiger. I think you need to work yourself up to the hair-washing phase."

Rigsby sniggered.

Jane drew himself up with as much dignity as he could muster while wearing hospital scrubs and fish underwear. "You guys want anything? I'm going to go get us some food."


	4. Chapter 4

She slept, mostly, those first couple of days. The doctors told Jane her body needed all her energy for the healing process. When she was awake, the drugs kept her fuzzy headed, though she did experience brief periods of lucidity. For him, the highlight of these moments was catching her checking him out in the jeans and polo shirt Grace had brought him.

He grinned at her. "Like what you see?"

She turned scarlet. "Not particularly," she muttered.

His grin widened. "Liar."

She threw a wad of gauze at him, though she paid dearly for her moment of revenge if her resulting grimace of pain was anything to judge by.

He went to help her, making a mental note to wear casual clothes around Lisbon more often.

In the end, the nurse came round and gave her another shot for the pain, glaring at Jane as though she knew it was his fault her patient had overtaxed herself.

Lisbon passed out again once the drugs kicked in, and Jane collapsed into his usual spot in the chair next to her bed.

He was exhausted, but couldn't get comfortable. He jealously watched Lisbon sleep and idly rolled his head on his shoulders, trying to work a kink out of his neck. He wasn't prone to such things, generally, but for all intents and purposes he had been sleeping upright in this infernal plastic chair for the past several days. It would probably sort itself out if he could just lie flat for awhile. Too bad there wasn't a couch in here.

After a moment, a better idea occurred to him.

Lisbon was tiny. Surely she didn't need that whole bed to herself. She could afford to share it with him. Sure, it was a twin bed, but he didn't mind being close. He weighed his options. What he was proposing to do would allow him to lie flat. Plus, he would be able to feel Lisbon's warmth beside him. His heart rate sped up slightly. He would be able to breathe in her scent. If he was careful not to wake her, he might be able to get away with touching her hair. Besides, Lisbon clearly wasn't in any shape to kick his ass even if she did wake up and didn't like the idea of having her consultant in bed with her.

There was pretty much no downside.

Decision made, he vacated his chair and approached the bed. He'd have to move her. She was right in the middle of the bed, and though she was small, he was going to need more space than that. He glanced around to make sure no one was coming, and then picked her up gently, mindful of her many wounds. He was careful not to dislodge any of the wires and tubes connected to her. It wouldn't do to have the nurses come running because he'd inadvertently set off an alarm or something.

He enjoyed the feeling of having her in his arms. She stirred slightly when he picked her up, but didn't open her eyes. "What're you doing?" she mumbled, turning her head into his chest.

"Sh. I'm just shifting you over a little."

"Why?"

"You're hogging the bed," he told her.

She frowned a little in her sleep. "S'my bed," she said, quite logically, but nearly incoherently.

"Yes, but I'm co-opting it. You're going to share it with me from now on."

"Mm."

Taking this as assent, he lowered her back to the bed. He frowned to himself as he deposited her slight weight on the right side of the bed. She was far too light. He'd have to make it his personal mission to fatten her up as soon as she could start consuming solid foods again.

He watched her for a moment more and then he toed off his shoes and crawled into bed beside her.

Ah. This was much better. He stretched his spine, luxuriating in the crisp sheets beneath him and the warmth of Lisbon beside him.

Feeling brave, he leaned over and pressed a gentle kiss to her temple, lingering to nuzzle his nose into her soft hair. He breathed deeply. Lisbon, despite having been in the hospital for several days by this point, smelled amazing. Van Pelt must have helped her wash her hair again that afternoon. He planned to take full advantage of the opportunity to inhale her scent from such close proximity without interruption. Really, this was one of the more brilliant ideas he'd had in quite some time. Normally he had to content himself with a whiff here or there in those fleeting moments when he could manufacture an excuse to invade her personal space. He amused himself for a few moments with picking apart the essentials that comprised her scent. Apples and cinnamon, definitely. A touch of hazelnut. And something underneath that was just her. That was the element he found so intoxicating. The element he craved.

He wanted to touch her, too. He would have liked to put his arm around her and pull her to him, or at least curl himself around her, but he was afraid he'd already risked enough by way of causing her additional pain when he'd picked her up. Those pesky broken ribs were cramping his style. He compromised by burying his nose even more deeply into her hair and taking her good hand hostage so he could trap it against his heart.

He breathed deeply, and slept.


	5. Chapter 5

Predictably, once she was able to stay awake for more than two hours at a time, Lisbon grew antsy to escape the confines of the hospital bed. She tried to get Jane to let the team bring her some work so she'd have something to do, but Jane flatly refused. She needed to focus on recuperating. She didn't need to add a stomach ulcer to her already extensive list of medical issues, which was what would surely result from her reviewing case files without being able to take any direct action on them herself.

She tried to go around him and get the team to bring the files to her behind his back, but he made it his business to acquire the appropriate leverage to ensure this did not happen. Rigsby and Van Pelt were frightfully easy to manage—only Cho posed the slightest challenge in terms of coming up with sufficient blackmail material-but he secured the cooperation of all three in the end. Lisbon grew irritable when she realized what he'd done, but Jane was intractable.

He attempted to distract her from her annoyance by offering to teach her some card tricks. She showed little interest in this at first, but eventually submitted to his insistent tutelage. Once begun, however, she forgot her initial resistance and demonstrated a child-like delight in learning the secrets behind the magic that Jane found utterly charming. In a way, witnessing this made him rethink his position about keeping her in the dark about his plans all the time. He was a showman, and Lisbon was his preferred audience in almost every circumstance. He loved to surprise her, but it occurred to him that she truly was happier in the role of co-conspirator, helping to orchestrate the plot, instead of merely reaping the results of it. He would still surprise her sometimes, of course. That was a delight which he would not willingly give up. But maybe he would let her in on the game a little more often, from now on.

She was still in quite a bit of pain. The broken ribs were the primary source of her discomfort, as they restricted both her movement and her breathing. The broken wrist didn't trouble her too much. The stab wounds would have been more of a problem, but the pain from the broken ribs so far eclipsed all the other injuries combined that he suspected it masked the true extent of the damage.

Despite all this, she seemed eager to begin physical therapy and threw herself into it wholeheartedly from the moment the doctors cleared her for moderate physical activity. If Jane hadn't already considered Lisbon a singularly impressive individual, the sight of her gritting her teeth against the pain and pushing herself to the limit to complete her therapy exercises would have been enough to cement his opinion that she was quite extraordinary in her strength.

He also noticed that she seemed determined to wean herself off the pain medication as soon as possible. He tried to dissuade her from any action which in his opinion would do nothing but prolong her suffering unnecessarily, but she brushed off his protests, arguing that she'd rather be able to feel the full extent of the damage to her body and keep her wits about her than float through her recovery in a haze.

He told her she really didn't need her wits about her to lie around in a hospital bed all day. She glared at him and replied pointedly that if she had had her wits about her, she would have been able to devise a strategy to keep unwanted individuals from invading her bed in the middle of the night.

All in all, though, she had accepted his presence in her bed with much better grace than he had any right to expect. She'd blinked at him blearily when she'd woken to find him beside her, that first time. "What are you doing here?" she asked groggily.

"Sleeping."

"Why are you sleeping in my bed?"

"It's more comfortable than sleeping in the chair," he said reasonably.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You could go home, you know. You don't have to stay here."

"I don't want to go home."

"Why not?"

"I like it here."

"You hate hospitals."

"This one isn't so bad." He was crazy about the view in this particular room, for example. It had no windows, but what he was primarily interested in gazing at was the view of its inhabitant, breathing and alive. He'd liked that view pretty well when he was still in the chair, but he liked it even better from his new vantage point in the bed.

"You should go home. You'd be more comfortable in your own bed."

He smiled at her and kissed the hand he'd had cradled against his chest the better part of the night. "I'm pretty comfortable right now."

She stared at him in shock, and he hopped out of bed before she had a chance to recover herself. "I'm going to get breakfast," he announced. "Do you want pancakes? No, don't answer—I can see by the look in your eye you want waffles." He winked at her. "Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back."

He heard her mutter something unintelligible that he was certain was not favorable towards him, but she didn't object when he crawled into bed next to her again later that night. She even shifted over voluntarily, though she made a show of grumbling under her breath when she did so.

He was delighted with this arrangement. He immediately started calculating how to prolong this unexpected contact with Lisbon as long as possible. He decided to behave as though two nights sleeping next to Lisbon constituted an established pattern, and just continue to invite himself into her bed as long as she would let him.

To his mild surprise, this actually worked. He continued to climb into bed next to her at the end of the day, and however much Lisbon might roll her eyes at him, she never kicked him out of the bed. She even, once all the tubes were detached, permitted him to put an arm around her while they slept.

He could get used to this.

The greatest threat to his plan, as far as he could see, was Lisbon's inevitable discharge from the hospital. Maybe there were still some drugs lingering in her system that could explain her unexpected compliance with the whole bed-sharing scheme, but he had no doubt that she would expect him to go back to his hotel and leave her alone once she was cleared to go back to her own place. He wasn't about to let this happen, however. Now that he'd experienced sharing a bed with Teresa Lisbon, he was thoroughly spoiled; he had no intention of giving her up.

Fortunately, he had the foresight to head Cho off at the pass when the other man offered to drive up from Sacramento to collect the pair of them when Lisbon was discharged. It would undoubtedly have been awkward to try to persuade Lisbon to let him stay with her if Cho was around. Therefore, he told Cho there was no need for him to take the time away from work to drive all the way back up to Truckee because he'd already arranged to rent a car to drive them back to Sacramento himself. Lisbon could hardly argue; this plan would prevent a loss of precious man hours for the CBI—so much time would be wasted if Cho had to drive up to the mountains and back just to pick them up.

Lisbon was feeling pretty cheerful at the prospect of getting out of the hospital, so despite how much she hated Jane's style of driving, she didn't seem too inclined to protest his proposal. Jane was banking on this positive frame of mind to help him in his ultimate object once they got back to Sacramento. He made sure to catalog all her reactions throughout the morning to give him a good frame of reference to ensure she remained relatively happy throughout their journey back. He was so desperate to keep her in a good mood he even promised to drive slowly on the mountain roads. This concession made her suspicious, but she allowed him to drive her home in the end.

"Thanks for the ride," she said when they got back to her apartment and he walked her to the door.

"You're welcome," he said cheerfully, pushing past her and walking into the apartment without waiting for an invitation. He lifted the bag he'd carried from the car for her. "I'll just put this upstairs, shall I?"

He didn't wait for a response, but went upstairs and deposited the bag on Lisbon's dresser. When he came downstairs again, he headed straight for the kitchen and started rummaging through her cupboards. "Do you have any tea?" he asked, unearthing a dusty kettle and setting it on the counter.

"Try the top right cupboard," Lisbon said, bemused. She clearly hadn't expected him to stay. Foolish woman.

He finally located an unopened box of tea in the furthest corner of the top most shelf of the cupboard—the one where he was sure vertically challenged Lisbon kept all the things she rarely used. He made a face when he saw the label. "Celestial Seasonings, Lisbon? Really? Have I taught you nothing?"

"I'm not a big tea drinker," Lisbon said defensively.

"Well, it's better than nothing, I suppose," he reflected. "Would you like a cup?"

"You're offering me my own tea?"

"What, is that a problem?"

"No, Jane, go ahead," she said sarcastically. "Make yourself at home."

He beamed at her. "Thank you, Lisbon, that's very gracious of you. Now, go sit on the couch and I'll bring you your tea when it's ready."

"I never said I wanted any—" she broke off and sighed. "Never mind," she said, defeated. And she went and sat down on her couch to read through a stack of mail that had piled up in her absence.

Jane took the opportunity to further investigate the state of her kitchen. He was appalled, but not surprised to find that there was pretty much nothing edible in the place. He cleaned the refrigerator, an effort which primarily consisted of sweeping a couple of ancient takeout containers into the garbage and then wiping down the now barren shelves for good measure. A more thorough search of the cupboards yielded nothing more useful than a box or two of microwave popcorn and a couple of cans of soup. Dismayed, he realized he was going to have to go out to acquire some real sustenance sooner rather than later. There was no way he could go now, though. It was too soon. If he left now, Lisbon might not be inclined to let him back into the apartment. He'd have to wait until tomorrow, once she'd gotten a bit more accustomed to the idea of him staying.

In the meantime, he called a little Italian place he knew and promised an exorbitant tip if they would deliver. Then he went over to the couch and sat down next to Lisbon.

"Honestly, woman, do you not know the meaning of the words 'rest and relaxation?'" he chided her. "Even out of the office, I turn my back for five minutes and you manage to bury yourself in paperwork."

"This stuff has been piling up for ages," she said defensively. "There could be something time sensitive in here that needs my attention."

"Ninety-five percent of that pile is junk mail," he said dismissively.

"That may be, but the other five percent are probably bills that I need to pay."

"You have all your regular bills set up to be paid automatically from your checking account each month," he pointed out.

"How do you know how I pay my bills?" she said, aghast.

"Meh. You seem the type."

She scowled at him. "Can I finish reading my mail, please?"

He sighed. "Fine. At least let me sort it for you so it will be more efficient and you can finish faster."

"What do you mean? How are you going to sort it?"

"I'll separate the junk mail from bills or anything else potentially important."

"How are you going to know which is which?" she asked suspiciously.

He shrugged. "The size and weight of the envelope, the presence of logos or other extraneous text, the address of the sender—"

"I get the idea," she interrupted. "Fine. You can sort the mail. But why does it matter if I read my mail efficiently? I'm on medical leave – it's not like I have anything better to do."

"You certainly do. As soon as you have finished reviewing what is the equivalent of paper receipts for bills you have already paid electronically, I am going to require your full attention for the purpose of watching a frivolous movie with me. You can pick the movie."

Without waiting for a response, he took the stack of mail from her and proceeded to divide it into two neatly separated piles. Once the pile had been whittled down, Lisbon made quick work of it and agreed to watch TV with him.

She settled on an old black and white movie on the classic movie channel and sat back on the couch to get comfortable.

"Ah, excellent choice," Jane said, putting an arm around her. "I love this one."

She looked sideways at the arm he'd draped around her. "Comfortable?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Very," he confirmed. "Thanks for asking."

"You've gotten very touchy feely lately," she commented.

He flashed a grin at her. "That a problem?"

"It's not like you. What's going on?"

He shrugged. "You were missing a long time. I found the experience… distressing. Let's just say having a tangible reminder that you're alive and relatively well is very reassuring."

She looked taken aback. "Oh." She mulled over his words. "I suppose I can put up with it, then. For reassurance's sake."

"You're too good to me, my dear," Jane said, leaning over and pressing a kiss to her temple. Now that permission had been given, naturally he was going to have to push the envelope a little.

"Damn straight," she agreed. But she settled back against him more comfortably after that.

Xxx

They watched the movie in companionable silence until the food arrived and then Jane had the pleasure of watching Lisbon dive into her manicotti with gusto. Really, it was a joy to watch the woman eat. He made a mental note to stock up on groceries the next day so he could have the pleasure of feeding her himself.

Afterwards, he helped her upstairs to get ready for bed. "Need any help getting into your jammies?" he offered.

"I think I can manage," she said dryly.

"Okay. I'm going to wash the dishes and then I'll be right up."

"You're staying?"

"Of course. You've been badly injured. You need someone to help you while you're recovering."

She sighed. "Jane, I'm fine."

"You are not fine. You can't even make it up the stairs by yourself."

"I can too," she muttered. "It just takes me longer."

"But I'm here, so why make it harder on yourself?"

She raised her eyebrows at him. "And now that I'm upstairs, you need to come back here for what? To tuck me into bed?"

"Well, of course. We wouldn't want you to go to bed inadequately tucked, would we?"

"And then you'll go back downstairs and sleep on the couch?" she challenged him.

"No, I was thinking I'd sleep up here with you. You can't expect such superior tucking service for free, after all, Lisbon. I'm going to expect some kind of reward for my efforts. I think sleeping in the bed instead of on the couch would be the perfect reward for services rendered."

"You're seriously expecting to sleep in this bed with me?"

"Certainly. Why not? You didn't object to sharing a bed with me in the hospital."

"That was different."

"How so?"

"You refused to leave and I couldn't let you sleep in that horrible chair the whole time."

"I could have gotten them to roll a cot in for me if I'd really wanted them to," he pointed out. "Just like I could go sleep in your spare room right now, if you insist upon it."

She stared at him. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I want to sleep with you, Lisbon."

She smirked. "For reassurance's sake?"

Among other things, he thought. "Yes."

He went downstairs and did the dishes. When he came back upstairs, he made an elaborate show of tucking Lisbon into bed, which she found very amusing. Then he slid under the covers next to her and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her as firmly to him as he could while still being mindful of her injuries.

"Is this part of the tucking in service?" she teased him.

"Of course. This is a critical part of the tucking in process, Lisbon. Wouldn't want you to catch a chill, after all."

"So thoughtful," she said wryly.

"I aim to please, Lisbon. I aim to please."


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning, Jane dropped Lisbon off at physical therapy and headed to the grocery store for provisions. He stocked up with enough groceries to feed them for weeks without leaving the house again, and had just enough time to stop at a department store to pick up a few additions to his casual wardrobe so thoughtfully begun by Grace and so surreptitiously admired by Lisbon. He also bought some new underwear. That trout underwear was simply appalling. Although Lisbon seemed to like it. He also bought a few things for Lisbon, while he was at it.

He had to hurry to get back before Lisbon's appointment was scheduled to be over, but he made it in time.

When she came out of the building, he was waiting for her by the curb. He greeted her with a blinding smile that stopped her in her tracks. "What did you do?" she asked suspiciously.

His smile didn't diminish a whit. "Nothing. What makes you think I've done something?"

"I don't know, but you have that look about you like you're extremely pleased with yourself. In my experience, that means you've done something that does not bode well for me."

"You're being paranoid," he said, helping her into the car and then going around and climbing into the driver's seat. "I just went to the store, that's all. How was physical therapy?"

"Fine."

He surveyed her, taking note of the slight pout. "But?"

She scowled. "The doctor said I won't be cleared to go back to work for six weeks. Can you believe that? What the hell am I supposed to do with myself for six weeks?"

He shrugged and pulled away from the curb. "Rest and relax?"

"Are you kidding? I'm going to go out of my mind with boredom after three days."

"Don't be silly, Lisbon. You're not going to be bored. You'll have me there to entertain you."

"You will have to go back to work at some point," she pointed out.

"Meh."

"I'm serious, Jane."

"So am I. I'm taking a leave of absence."

She raised her eyebrows. "Oh? Cleared that with your boss, have you?"

"I'm an independent contractor. I set my own schedule and I only bill the CBI for hours worked, so why should anyone have a problem with me taking a little time off?"

"You don't see a problem with not getting a paycheck for the next six weeks?" she said incredulously.

It was his turn to raise his eyebrows at her. "I'm not exactly hurting for money, Lisbon. Despite the pittance you pay me, I have a healthy savings account and I can always get more money when I need it."

"And you're planning to do what with this life of leisure? Move in with me while I'm recovering?"

"I believe you've captured the essence of the plan, yes."

"Are you serious?" she squeaked.

He didn't see why she should balk at this when she'd so far been amenable to the whole sleeping together thing. "Certainly."

She shook her head. "Jane, I get that you're in this weird overprotective mode right now, but don't you think actually moving in with your boss is taking it a bit far?"

"No. Come on, Lisbon, it will be fun. We'll be roommates."

She folded her arms across her chest. "Does that mean you'll be paying half the rent?"

"I figured we could share the expenses. You can be in charge of the rent, and I'll be in charge of groceries and entertainment."

"What about your place?"

"What about it?"

"I hope you're not planning to give it up on my account."

"I thought I'd keep it for the time being so I'll have somewhere to go in case you get sick of me and kick me out."

"So you're expecting to go back there later today?" she snarked.

"Very funny." He pulled up in front of Lisbon's apartment building and parked the car. He hopped out of the car and hurried around to the passenger side to help her out.

"I'm perfectly capable of getting out of the car on my own, Jane," she grumbled.

"Fine," he said easily. He stepped back. "Go ahead."

She grabbed the side of the car with her good hand and attempted to pull herself up.

She tried three times before she collapsed back onto the seat, grimacing in pain. She looked up at Jane, who was still standing there with a placid look on his face. "Oh, just shut up and help me up," she snapped.

"Certainly, my dear." He extended his hand and helped her up.

xxx

He noticed she looked exhausted from the physical therapy session, and the way her mouth was set into a firm line implied that she was in pain, so when they got inside, he decided to take it upon himself to make her feel better. He ran her a bath, pouring in Epsom salts for the aches and pains and a generous portion of lavender bubble bath that he'd bought for her to help her relax. He helped her upstairs and left her to her bath, returning downstairs to bring in the bags from his shopping expedition. It took him five trips. He put the groceries away, but left the rest of the bags on the counter for the time being. Then he set about the task of preparing their lunch.

He puttered around the kitchen contentedly, making a few adjustments here and there as he cooked to make the arrangement of the room more convenient. Lisbon, he knew, was unlikely to notice or care, as she rarely cooked, so he felt free to make a few modifications to her kitchen as he saw fit. He put the final touches on the elaborate meal he'd constructed and waited for a few moments before it dawned on him that she'd been an awfully long time in the bath.

Concerned that something might be wrong, he went upstairs and knocked softly on the bathroom door. "Lisbon?"

"Just a minute!" Her voice was slightly panicked, as though she were startled to find him so close.

He pressed his hand flat against the door. "Is everything all right?"

"Everything's fine, Jane," she called, her voice straining to sound normal. "I'll be out in a minute."

He frowned. There was a tension in her voice that made it plain to him that she was lying. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Nothing's going on, Jane. I just need a few minutes and I'll be right out."

"You've already been a few minutes," he pointed out. "Why can't you come out now?"

"Because I'm not ready."

"Do you need help with anything?"

"No!"

He was really going to have to teach her how to lie convincingly one of these days. Deciding this back and forth wasn't getting them anywhere, he turned the knob and barged into the bathroom.

The first thing he noticed was that she wasn't wearing a shirt. She'd pulled on a pair of yoga pants and had managed to put on her bra, but that was as far as she'd gotten. She snatched up a towel and clutched it to her chest to cover herself. "Jesus, Jane, do you have no respect whatsoever for personal boundaries?" she snapped. "I just got out of the goddamned bath, for God's sake."

He ignored her. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing is the matter, except that I have a consultant who _doesn't know how to listen_. Now, get the hell out of my bathroom before I hurt you."

"I'm not leaving until you tell me what's wrong, Lisbon, so get used to it."

"I told you, _nothing's wrong_," she said through clenched teeth.

"You're lying. You're obviously having trouble with something in here. Are you having trouble getting your shirt on? I can help."

"Why can't you get it through your thick skull that I don't want your help?"

"Because you may not want my help, but you need it. I don't see the purpose in continuing to act like you don't when obviously I can tell that there's something that you're not able to do by yourself. So what is it? The shirt, or something else?"

She looked furious, but after a moment of internal struggle, he saw her come to the conclusion that the only way to get rid of him was to let him help her, whether she liked it or not. She sighed. "I was trying to tape my ribs."

He saw the tape on the bathroom counter. "And you couldn't reach. Because your ribs are broken and trying to twist around to tape them yourself causes you more pain than leaving them untaped would."

He took the tape from the counter and stepped towards her. "Come here, I'll do it for you."

She drew back. "Like hell you will."

"Stop being so stubborn, woman, and just let me help you."

She looked at him, annoyed. "There's no way you're going to go away until I agree, is there?"

"Pretty much," he agreed. "Come on, turn around. I'll fix you up."

She sighed, defeated. "Fine. But if you ever mention this to anyone, I will kill you."

"Duly noted."

She turned around and dropped the towel, and Jane stopped short as he was suddenly confronted with incontrovertible evidence of just how badly she'd been hurt.

The bruises were starting to fade, but her entire back was covered in an array of mottled black and blue. He'd known she'd been beaten, had seen her more publicly accessible bruises when they were in the hospital, but this? He hadn't come up with anything this bad in his worst nightmares, and that was saying something. He was amazed she was even upright.

"My God, Lisbon," he breathed. "I had no idea how bad it was."

She shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, well. You should see the other guy."

As they both paused and considered the fact that the other guy was actually dead, the joke fell somewhat flat. While Jane for one was glad that Taggart was in the ground, at that moment he couldn't see anything remotely funny about a single element of the whole situation.

He reached forward and traced the edge of the angry red line just above her left kidney, counting thirty-seven stitches. There were twelve more lower on her right side, near her hip. He knew she had more in the front – six along her hairline where Taggart had struck her with a beer bottle, and at least twenty more for a long gash on her arm where he'd dragged the broken glass after he'd smashed the bottle over her head. The doctor had told him he'd slashed her along the ribs in several places as well. The doctor seemed to think it was lucky, the way Taggart had cut her, as though it was the height of good fortune that he hadn't gone out of his way to stab her deeply enough to damage any internal organs. Jane had heard him out without taking in the full meaning of what he was saying. At the time, all he'd cared about was that the doctor seemed to think she was going to live, and he'd clung to anything that sounded like good news like a life line. But this… he thought of Taggart striking her, cutting her while her hands were bound, unable to fight back, and swallowed convulsively.

He raked his eyes over the bruises, reconstructing the blows that had dealt them from his observations, and forcing himself to commit every single one to memory. Then there was the damage he couldn't see, he reminded himself, catching sight of the awkwardly closed catch on her bra. The broken ribs, her wrist. She must have tied herself in knots trying to close that damn catch herself instead of asking him for help, but it had caused her so much pain that she had only managed to get one hook into place before she'd given up. It wasn't even hooked into the correct place, the strap only tenuously closed by the lone hook caught on the lowest eyelet, the others dangling below, slightly askew.

His hands were shaking. He wanted to pull her into his arms, cradle him to her and never allow anyone else to touch her ever again. But he feared that even his touch would not be gentle enough to bring her as close as he wanted to her to be and still spare her further pain.

As a compromise, he bent down til his mouth hovered over the center of her back; he leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to her spine.

She went still under his touch. Despite the abuse it had suffered, her skin was soft and smooth under his lips. "Jane?" Her voice was choked. "What are you doing?"

"Shh," he said softly, without lifting his lips from her skin. "I'm kissing it and making it better."

She laughed somewhat hysterically. "You're really taking this Florence Nightingale routine a bit far, you know that?"

He couldn't resist the urge to press another kiss to her shoulder blade. He straightened, and their eyes met in the bathroom mirror for a charged moment. "Just working on my bedside manner."

She gave him a strained smile, and he busied himself with the medical tape. "Lift up your arm," he said softly.

Wordlessly, she obeyed. She watched him in the mirror as he gently bound her ribs with the tape, wincing slightly as he tenderly pressed the tape to her skin.

He made short work of it, smoothing the tape down and drawing her arm back to her side when he was finished. Then he fixed her bra strap for good measure, quickly unhooking it and rehooking it before she could protest. "All set," he announced.

She looked at him with wide eyes. "Thanks."

He picked up her t-shirt and held it up for her. She gave him a look, but ultimately sighed and allowed him to help her pull it over her head. She guessed she was just going to have to accept that her humiliation on this occasion was to be nothing less than complete.

Then he surprised her again by stepping towards her again and wrapping his arms around her as gently as though she was a fragile glass ornament. "Is this okay?" he asked softly. "Am I hurting you?"

She swallowed. "No, you're not hurting me."

"I'm glad you're alive," he said simply, stroking her hair.

She leaned against him for a moment and closed her eyes. "Me, too."


	7. Chapter 7

Lisbon couldn't look at him as he helped her downstairs after this interlude, and shook herself free of him as soon as they made it to the bottom of the stairs.

Thinking it wise to give her a little space at that moment, Jane said nothing, but headed into the kitchen. "Come on, lunch is ready."

She followed him reluctantly. She was distracted from her discomfort, however, when her gaze landed on the pile of shopping bags that he'd left on the kitchen counter. "Jesus, Jane. What is all this crap?"

"Oh, just a bit of this and that."

She peered into the bag nearest her. "Jane! There are like fifty DVDs in here."

"So?"

"You don't think you might have gone a bit overboard?"

He shrugged. "You're recuperating. You have to watch a lot of movies to recuperate properly. It's a well known fact."

She pulled several items out of the next bag for inspection. "Board games?"

Jane set about serving their lunch, piling their plates high with the food he'd prepared. "I tried to get ones that would be harder for me to cheat at, so that you'd be less likely to kill me before the aforementioned recuperation is complete."

She looked at the game in her hands. "How the hell do you cheat at Boggle?"

"That's for me to know and you hopefully never to find out."

She continued her perusal of the bags while he set the table. "You got puzzles, too?"

"Yup. So you'll have something to do once you get tired of losing to me at board games."

She glared at him. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to kick your ass at Boggle."

He grinned to himself, pleased that she'd already accepted the idea of playing board games with him instead of insisting that playing games was a waste of time. "We'll see."

She looked in the next two bags next. There were about thirty-five books between the two of them. "Did it ever occur to you that I might not have the same taste in reading material as you do?"

"Read them all," he challenged her. "If there is a single one in there that you don't like, I'll kiss Cho under the mistletoe at the next CBI holiday party."

She gave him an arch look. "I'd be interested to see you try that." She moved onto the next set of bags. "What's in here?"

This was where it got tricky. "Oh, those. Uh, just a few things for you to wear around the house."

She looked at him sharply. "You bought me clothes?" she said incredulously.

"Just a few things," he said again, avoiding her eyes.

She started to pull things out of the bags. There were pullovers, soft cotton shirts, sweatpants, and sweaters of all different styles and colors. "You call this a few things?"

"Well, you're going to be stuck inside the house a lot and most of your clothes are work clothes. I wanted you to be comfortable."

She pulled out a green dress. "What about this? Are you expecting me to get all dolled up to watch movies on the couch during my recuperation?"

"No, I just thought that one would look good on you." He hoped she didn't find the other two dresses until later.

She looked at him with wide eyes. "Jane… this is really too much."

"I told you, I'm in charge of entertainment."

"You shouldn't have spent all this money."

"Nonsense. Why shouldn't I spend it? Money is just useless green paper until you convert it into some tangible good that you can use, after all."

She shook her head. "Jane, you are really starting to weird me out with all this stuff."

"What stuff?"

"This! The wanting to move in, the sleeping in my bed, barging into my bathroom without permission." He noticed she didn't mention the kiss. "And buying me clothes… I don't know, it's kind of creepy."

"Why is it creepy? I was at the department store and thought it would be nice to get you a couple things."

"I don't know. It's just sort of… intimate." She was thinking about the kiss again. So was he, for that matter.

"You shouldn't let your fear of intimacy prevent you from accepting a gift from a well-meaning friend, Teresa."

She looked away and busied herself with rummaging through the bags some more. "You might have to take this back, anyway. I don't even know if this stuff is going to fit."

"Don't be ridiculous. I know your size, and I know what looks good on you."

"Ugh. You make it sound like I'm some kind of doll you're trying to dress up."

He paused. "Okay, when you put it like that, it does sound kind of creepy."

"Right."

"What is the big deal? You know money means nothing to me. I could win enough at the blackjack tables in less than two hours to pay for all this and then some."

She sighed. "It's not just the money, Jane."

"What is it, then? The fact that you hate the idea of accepting gifts or offers of help from anyone because it makes you feel beholden to them and you can't stand relying on other people?"

"I wouldn't say that, exactly," she hedged. "I'm just a little uncomfortable about accepting extravagant gifts from someone I work with."

His jaw tightened. "Someone you work with?"

"Fine, from anybody, okay?"

He sighed. "Lisbon, I'm not expecting anything in return, here. You're my friend. I hate seeing you in pain. You have a long and difficult road ahead of you in terms of your body healing from this incredibly traumatic experience. All I want is to make you a little more comfortable along the way if I possibly can."

"Jane, that's… sweet, but—"

He stared down at the plate in front of him. "I just—I haven't had anyone to spoil in a long time. You have been through a terrible ordeal, and forgive me, but I think you need to be spoiled a little at the moment."

She fidgeted. "It's not that I don't appreciate what you're doing, Jane. I do. I'm just… really bad at this."

"Accepting help from someone who cares about you?"

"Well… yeah, basically."

"You don't have to do everything by yourself, Teresa."

She smiled weakly. "Old habits die hard, I guess."

"Hey." He reached out and touched her hand. "You've been there for me during some pretty hellish times in my life. Can't you let me be there for you, this one time?"

She looked down and didn't speak for a long moment. "I'll try," she said at last.

He squeezed her hand. "That's all I ask."

xxx

Later that night, when they got in bed, Jane tentatively moved towards her, curving himself around her again. "Is this okay?" he asked for the second time that day. He'd been holding her in a similar manner on previous nights they'd shared a bed, but after receiving such a graphic reminder of the extent of her injuries earlier that day, he found he felt the need to double check that he wasn't hurting her with his need to be close.

She nodded, though she was still holding herself somewhat stiffly. He wanted to kiss the back of her neck, but he figured he'd already pushed the bounds of her tolerance enough for one day and had better take it easy. He buried his nose in her hair instead, breathing her in. "You smell really good," he commented.

She flushed. "Thanks."

"You know what that means, don't you?"

Her voice was full of trepidation. "What?"

"I have truly excellent taste in bubble bath."

She relaxed against him. "Good to know you have some skills you can fall back on if the whole consultant gig doesn't work out."

"Mm."

She was silent for a long time. Just as he was about to fall asleep under the influence of her warm body and sweet smelling hair, she spoke again, so softly her voice was barely audible. "Jane?"

He opened his eyes. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry for being… you know."

"Paranoid that accepting any gesture of help from your wayward consultant would threaten your independence?"

She exhaled. "Yeah. That."

"It's okay. Don't worry about it."

"Jane?" she said again.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for taking care of me," she whispered.

He smiled, closing his eyes again. "My pleasure, Lisbon. My pleasure."


	8. Chapter 8

They settled into somewhat of a routine after that. Jane took Lisbon to physical therapy in the mornings, and amused himself by watching her complete her exercises until it was time to take her home. She was often tired from her therapy sessions, so after taking a bath, it was fairly common for her to take a nap while Jane made them lunch. They would eat together, and then read or talk or play a game. (Lisbon, Jane discovered, took no prisoners when it came to the game of Boggle). If she was up for it, they would take a short walk in the late afternoon, and as she improved, he took her on other short excursions to prevent her from going stir crazy inside the apartment. Sometimes he took her to the movies for a matinee showing, or just out for coffee (his efforts to reduce her caffeine intake had thus far been unsuccessful). He liked taking her to the park the best, because he could watch the winter sunlight strike the reddish glints in her dark hair and drink in the serene lines of her face as she watched children in the park feed the ducks or play on the playground.

In the evening, Jane cooked again and they ate dinner together. Occasionally, the team would stop by and they would all eat dinner together. Most nights, though, it was just the two of them. After dinner, they usually curled up on the couch and watched a movie. Then Jane helped Lisbon upstairs and they got ready for bed. They climbed into bed together and fell asleep, limbs entangled with one another.

xxx

The third day after he brought her home from the hospital, he watched her as he poured himself a cup of tea while she devoured the eggs he'd made her for breakfast.

She looked up, catching him staring at her. "What?"

"Nothing," he said, keeping his gaze fixed on her over the top of his teacup. "I was just wondering if we're ever going to talk about it."

She took another forkful of eggs. "Talk about what?"

"Talk about what happened to you."

Her eyes went blank. "Why would we need to talk about it?"

"You almost died, Lisbon. It was a fairly significant event."

"Yeah, well, I didn't die, so I don't see any point in making a fuss about it."

"I'm no expert, of course, but it seems to me like it might be a good idea to talk about it to someone."

She busied herself with her eggs. "Not interested."

He sighed inwardly. This was going to be harder than he'd thought. "Look, I know your last experience with a psychologist was… less than pleasant, but surely you couldn't have a worse experience than that. I mean, what are the odds that you could possibly be framed for murder by a psychologist assigned to help you a second time? Trying again with someone new might be worth a shot."

She put her fork down. "You are such a hypocrite, Jane. I can't believe you, of all people, are pushing this."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Are you kidding? Every time you've ever been hurt since I've known you, you check yourself out of the hospital against medical advice the minute anybody's back is turned, and you carry on scheming as usual like nothing's the matter until you pass out from the flu or a concussion or whatever."

"That's different."

"How? You never even talk to me about your feelings when something like that happens. You sure as hell don't talk to some shrink about what's going through your head at times like that."

She had a point. "Perhaps I'd be willing to rethink my attitude on that point if you will do the same."

She snorted in disbelief. "Yeah, right. Like you won't lie to my face right now to get me to spill my guts and then do exactly as you please when your turn comes around."

"Lisbon, please. It would make me feel better if you would talk to someone about what happened. If you're not comfortable talking to me about it, perhaps a professional would be able to help."

Her eyes skated away from his. "They already made me talk about it at the hospital. Plus I had to give my statement for the incident report."

"Did that help?"

"Not really."

"Didn't they have one of those trauma specialists at the hospital?"

"All those trauma specialists are the same," she said dismissively. "They just want you to talk about every little feeling you've ever had until you get so sick of your own voice that you'll say just about anything to get them to leave you alone."

Jane considered the fact that Lisbon was familiar enough with trauma specialists that she could make such a sweeping generalization based on her own experience. She probably had learned how to answer such questions in a way that would satisfy someone who had to work their way down a checklist looking for diagnoses that fit into the DSM IV. "You're sure you don't want to talk about it with me at least?" he double checked.

She met his gaze, eyes snapping. "Someone bigger and stronger than me kidnapped me and beat the shit out of me. What else is there to say?"

"Well, he was bigger, certainly," Jane allowed. "Stronger, I'm not so sure about."

"Usually, those two things go together."

"Not in your case, my dear."

Her hand unconsciously went to the cut on her forehead. "He felt plenty strong to me."

"All I'm saying is, one of you came back from your little trip to the mountains dead, and it wasn't the pint-sized one. Survival of the fittest, Lisbon. I think you proved who was stronger, in the end."

She gave him a look halfway between exasperation and annoyance. "Pint-sized?"

"I'm sorry- do you prefer the term, 'person of diminutive proportions?'"

"I prefer that you steer clear of the short jokes all together."

He reached out and wrapped his hand around her tiny, perfect wrist. "I'm not making fun of you, Lisbon. I am merely drawing attention to the fact that given the fact that size and strength so often go together, as you say, the feat of your escape from someone so much physically larger than yourself is even more of a testament to your strength."

She looked down and slid her hand away from him. "I'm fine, Jane."

"You're not, Lisbon," he said softly. "A killer took you and made you vulnerable. He hurt you. You stared death in the face. Experiences like that change you."

She raised her head and looked at him for a long moment. "I thought about you a lot while he had me," she said finally.

He hadn't been expecting that. "Really?" he said, pleased. He found himself half-hoping she was going to make some romantic confession, about how being so close to death had made her see how important he was to her, and that if they ever saw each other again, they shouldn't waste any more time.

Of course, this was Lisbon. She didn't do romantic confessions. "Yeah. I kept thinking if you had been there, you would have been able to trick him into letting us go, somehow. Or plot some brilliant escape."

His smile faded. "Oh." He should have been there. If only he'd gone with her on that damn interview, maybe Taggart wouldn't have even tried for her. Or if he had, they could have taken him down together.

"That was how I got free, actually."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I kept thinking about what you would have done, if you were in my position. How you would have outsmarted him."

He had no idea what he would have done. Except traded his life away for the merest hope of saving Lisbon. "How did that help you get free?"

"I'd lost track of time. I had no idea how long I'd been there. But I was in bad shape—dehydrated, half-starved, pretty beaten up. I was drifting in and out of consciousness. I had no way to know if help was going to come, but it didn't seem likely that anybody would be able to find this place out in the middle of nowhere."

Jane realized he'd been holding his breath and forced the air to exit his lungs. "Go on."

"I figured I wasn't likely to improve much, the way things were going. He was going to get bored sooner or later and just kill me." Jane was disturbed at the dispassionate tone in which she said it. "I had to act before I was too weak to make a run for it. I'd been asking myself 'What would Jane do?' since he first took me. And finally the answer came to me."

"Which was what?" he asked.

She smiled wryly. "To do absolutely the stupidest thing I could think of."

"I beg your pardon," he said, affronted.

She ignored him. "Taggart had been drinking on and off throughout the whole time he had me. It was kind of pathetic, actually. It was like he didn't know what to do with me once he had me, so he kept alternating between downing beer and hitting me like he was killing time until he figured it out."

Jane flinched at the offhand way in which she described the way that man had put his hands on her. A horrible thought occurred to him. None of the other victims had been sexually assaulted, but they'd all been beautiful women. It was hard to believe that didn't play a role in his motivation to hurt and kill them. "He didn't…"

"No," she said quickly. "He didn't rape me. I think he had some kind of… problem. I mean, he was clearly, um, sexually interested in me. But it was like he had some kind of mental block. I think that's what happened with the other victims, too. He desired them, but couldn't act on it, for some reason. I'm pretty sure that he killed them out of frustration. He took them, but when he couldn't get what he wanted from them after a few days, his frustration would reach a boiling point and he would break their necks. It was a little different with me. He never intended to take me. He just saw me coming up his front walk and panicked. He must have known I was a cop—he probably saw my badge on my belt. I think he took me because he didn't know what else to do. Then once he had me, he started to confuse me with his other… prey."

Jane swallowed against the bile threatening to rise up into his throat at the thought of Taggart looking at her, desiring her. "So what did you do?"

"I couldn't do a damn thing with my hands bound. I had to get out of those ropes. So I figured if he left one of those beer bottles near enough to me, maybe I could break it and use the shards to cut through the bonds. But he never let go of the bottle."

Jane sat back. "Yet you got free."

"Yeah." She cleared her throat. "That's where the whole doing the stupidest thing I could think of thing came in."

"Which was what?"

She hesitated, and he could see she was having second thoughts about admitting this to him.

Suddenly, the pieces clicked into place. "You provoked him," he breathed. "You provoked him into breaking that bottle himself." She shifted uncomfortably, and his eye was drawn to the thin red line along her hairline. "Over your own head."

She looked down, which was admission enough.

He stared at her, aghast. "My God, Lisbon."

She raised her eyes to meet his, and there was defiance in them, as though she was daring him to suggest she might have done otherwise. "Once the bottle was broken, I was able to get hold of one of the pieces. He went over to the mattress and passed out for a little while and I was able to use the glass to slice through the rope. My plan was to slit his throat with it." Her eyes looked haunted, and Jane thought about what that must have done to Lisbon, to so coldly calculate the death of her enemy. She was the one who had unshakable faith in the law, the one who thought life was a precious gift from God, and that He was the only one who ought to be able to take that gift away. To her, planning to kill a man in cold blood would have felt like a betrayal of the deepest part of herself, even if it was the only way to save her own life.

"But that plan didn't work out," he prompted her, wanting to draw her out of her dark thoughts.

She came back to herself. "No," she said softly. "It didn't. He woke up when I was halfway across the room. I think you know the rest. We fought. He almost managed to strangle me, at the end, but I was able to stab him, finally, with that same piece of glass." She flexed her hand. "It's a wonder I didn't slice open any of my own veins with that thing doing the job. I knew he was still alive at that point, but I wasn't strong enough to fight anymore, so I got the hell out of there. I could hear him coming after me, but I thought if I could make it down to the road, someone might see me and be able to call for help." The corners of her mouth turned up in a wry smile, but the expression was devoid of humor. "Turns out I didn't make it that far."

Jane couldn't speak for a moment, unable to process the fact that she thought she was doing what he might have done when she'd set the chain of events that had nearly killed her into motion. He might have done something similar if it was only his own life at stake, but hers? Never. The first rule of gambling was never to bet what you couldn't afford to lose. He'd gambled with titans before, won and lost millions without breaking a sweat, but he would never have entertained a scheme that would have the remotest possibility of putting her life in danger. His breath was frozen in his lungs. And she, Lisbon, had almost gambled that most precious object away in the space of a few moments. God. It was enough to put a man off Vegas for life.

She had won the bet, in the end. She'd taken a risk, and it had paid off. It had nearly cost her life, but she'd won her freedom and come out of the experience scarred, but still breathing, which was more than could be said for Taggart. Still. So close. His life (after all, what was left of it, but hers?) had hung in the balance by a thread, and she'd recklessly handed a pair of shears to the enemy.

"Jane?" Lisbon's voice sounded concerned, and very far away.

He opened his mouth to respond to her, but found that all that came out was short, shallow puffs of air. He couldn't seem to catch his breath.

He felt her hand on his arm, and heard her voice again, sounding really alarmed now. "Jane? What's going on? What's the matter with you?"

He broke through the ice closing his throat and lungs with difficulty. "Huh," he said, bemused. His breath was still coming in shallow gasps. "I do believe I'm having a panic attack."

"What?" Now Lisbon's voice sounded panicked, and he heard the scrape of her chair as she stood up to come around the table. She took his hands in hers, the rough Velcro on her wrist brace scratchy against his palm. "Jane. Look at me." Her strong grip grounded him, and he was able to obey, bringing his eyes up to meet hers. Those eyes. He'd come so close to never seeing them again. So dangerously close.

His lungs seized up again, and she released one of his hands to thump him none too gently on the back. "Breathe, Jane!"

He sucked in a lungful of air, and another. He looked into her eyes again. "Were you scared?" he managed to say at last.

She looked shocked at the question. Probably because she wasn't expecting him to continue his interrogation while he was in the midst of an anxiety attack. But she still answered. "Of course I was scared. I thought I was going to die."

"But you accepted it," he said. "You accepted the possibility of your own death, and you faced it."

She shrugged helplessly. "What choice did I have?"

"I was scared, too," he said, turning his head to look out of her kitchen window as he said it, because he found he wasn't quite able to admit this to her while looking her in the eye. "I was the most scared I've ever been in my life."

"But…" she trailed off. He looked back at her and he saw her check the thought, unwilling to voice her objection.

He smiled wryly. "The first time, I didn't know. I mean, I was scared, of course, when I saw that note. But I didn't take in its full meaning until it was too late. I didn't know enough about loss then, to really comprehend what it would mean, to have to live with it, day in and day out. I was too ignorant to be as scared as I should have been. I would have been terrified, if I'd known. I'd never have been able to open that door."

He took another deep breath. "This time I knew. Only I couldn't face it—couldn't accept it. "

Lisbon had no idea what to say to this.

He couldn't blame her. Really, there was nothing to say. He could sense her discomfort, and decided to let her off the hook. Attempting to sound normal, he said lightly, "Your eggs are getting cold."

She gave him a look meant to communicate that he wasn't fooling anybody, but she went back to her place at the other side of the table and worked on finishing her breakfast. He exhaled, then breathed in deeply, trying to get himself under control. He hoped she felt better, because he felt decidedly worse. Next time he decided to pester Lisbon into sharing with him, he'd need to be better prepared for what he was getting himself into.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: Short chapter tonight, but hopefully tomorrow's will make up for it!

xxx

Lisbon was getting better. The bruises faded, and the cuts scabbed and then started to scar over. Her wrist and ribs still pained her, but she was getting stronger every day. After he'd been staying with her for about three weeks, Jane realized with a touch of unease that Lisbon really didn't need him there anymore. She was still on medical leave for another three weeks, but she could manage most of the tasks of daily living on her own well enough. She didn't need him anymore. Jane had no intention of pointing this out to her, but it was only a matter of time before she realized it herself. He would have to brace himself for her to try to kick him out any day now.

Sure enough, several days later, Lisbon brought up the matter on her own.

She'd been uneasy all through breakfast. It was coming now, he knew. Any moment. Jane sipped his tea and watched her, waiting.

Fortunately, he had a plan.

"Listen, Jane," she began.

He smiled at her. "Yes, Lisbon?"

"I've been thinking…"

He took a bite of toast. "What about?"

"I'm feeling much better these days…"

"I'm glad to hear it."

She took a deep breath. "I want you to know I really appreciate everything you've done for me, these past few weeks. I mean, the cooking, and chauffeuring me around to doctors appointments, and everything."

He took another sip of his tea. "And keeping you stocked with movies and books and games," he reminded her. "Don't forget that."

She smiled slightly. "I won't forget it."

"Good."

"But, well…"

"Yes?"

She fidgeted. "You don't need to stay anymore, you know."

He would need to tread carefully here. He adopted a casual tone. "I know."

She looked up at him sharply, her eyes narrowed. She looked suspicious, but determined to carry her argument through. "I can manage the stairs by myself now."

"Yes, you're a credit to your physical therapy instructor," he said mildly.

"Maybe it's time you went back to your own place," she pressed.

He pretended to consider this. "Nah."

This startled her. "What do you mean, 'nah?'" she said in disbelief.

He sipped his tea again. "I like it here. I don't want to leave."

"You don't?" she said, too stunned to make the slightest effort to hide her shock.

"You're a pleasant companion, Lisbon. I find I'm very reluctant to give you up."

"Give me up?" she echoed, as though the words were foreign objects resting on her tongue.

"Yes, I'm afraid I've gotten rather spoiled by your presence. I'd prefer not to do without it."

"You can't just—move in with me!" Lisbon sputtered.

He raised his eyebrows. "Technically, I already have."

"You have not," she denied instantly.

"I have clothes in your closet."

"You still have your hotel room," she countered.

"The last remaining formality before our cohabitation is officially complete," he said dismissively. "It's convenient, really, that there's no pesky lease to worry about."

"We're not cohabiting," Lisbon said stubbornly. "I have my place, and you have your room at the hotel."

"A technicality. I haven't set foot in it in weeks."

"All of your stuff is there."

"On the contrary, most of my stuff is here."

"Only because you hardly _have_ any stuff besides clothes and your damn Red John notebooks!"

"Exactly. I have so little stuff that its addition to the contents of your apartment will hardly inconvenience you."

"Wanna bet?" she muttered.

"Nonsense, I don't take up that much space. It will be fine." He looked around. "Although, once you're more accustomed to the idea, I might request that you let me redecorate a bit. This place could use a little flair."

Lisbon stared at him. "You've lost your mind," she said finally. "You have finally, utterly, and completely lost your grip on reality."

"Lisbon, this argument is silly. Why would I move out? I don't want to leave. What's more, you don't want me to leave either."

"What makes you so sure of that?" she said incredulously.

"Your argument is that I should leave because you no longer physically need my help to get around the apartment and do chores and the like. We passed that mark a week ago. If that was the real reason, you would have asked me to leave then."

She blushed furiously. "I still needed help reaching stuff on the top shelves of the cupboard."

"Come on, Lisbon. I'm a good roommate. I cook, I clean, and I provide entertainment. I know you're getting better, but you're still not exactly at the top of your game. I know I could still be useful to you. Help you reach those things on the top shelves. Let me stay."

She looked uncertain.

"At least until you're no longer on medical leave," he added quickly.

She released a deep breath. "And then you'll go back to your own place?"

Not if he had anything to say about it. "And then we'll… reassess."

She scowled. "Fine. You can stay. For now."

He released his own breath. Well, that had gone better than he'd anticipated.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: When I was writing this story, this chapter is the one I was most impatient to get to, and it was definitely the most fun to write. Hope you like it!

xxx

She still seemed a bit twitchy around him, so Jane decided he'd better impress upon her what an excellent roommate he was so she wouldn't have a chance to have second thoughts about letting him stay.

He also decided to engineer an outing where they could be on neutral ground, and the question of infiltrated territory was moot. With this in mind, about a week later, he kidnapped her and took her to Napa for lunch after her physical therapy appointment. She was stronger now, and could bear the hour long drive with minimal discomfort.

It was a beautiful winter day. It was crisp and sunny, and the hills of Napa were a brilliant emerald green.

He took her to one of his favorite wineries for lunch, and after a deliciously languid meal, he suggested they take a brief walk if she wasn't too tired.

She agreed, and they walked up a curving path behind the winery to a viewpoint that overlooked the entire Napa valley. The view was breathtaking.

They stood there in silence, admiring the view. After awhile, she closed her eyes and turned her face towards the sun, basking in the afternoon sunlight.

He watched her for a moment, quite taken by the sight of her in this relaxed state. Speaking of breathtaking.

She opened her eyes and caught him staring at her. "What?" she said, smiling self-consciously.

He shrugged, smiling back. "Nothing. It's just… you look good."

Her smile widened. "I feel good."

"Yeah?" he said, pleased. "Not too sore?"

"A little stiff, maybe, but not too bad. I'd say I'm definitely on the mend." She flexed her wrist unconsciously. The brace had finally come off a few days before, and she was enjoying the newly discovered freedom of movement.

"I'm glad to hear it."

She looked out over. "It's so beautiful here," she commented. "I should really come out here more often."

"Yeah?" he said, pleased that she was enjoying the outing he'd planned well enough to want to come back. "Well, if you ever need a ride…"

She snorted. "Yeah, right. Like I'd voluntarily sign up for a ride that involved your driving."

"Oh, please. My driving is not that bad."

"It really is."

"I think you secretly like my driving."

"No, I don't," she said with certainty.

"Under the right circumstances, you do," he countered. "That time when I brought you to Napa before, in that fancy sports car, you definitely enjoyed yourself."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "What makes you so sure of that?"

"Your eyes were sparkling when you got out of the car. Ironclad proof that you enjoyed the ride."

"What exactly about that means I was having fun? Maybe it was just the reflection of the fear in my eyes."

"The nature of the sparkle proves it. It was obviously an 'I secretly love fast cars' sparkle. Admit it, Lisbon, you have a little bit of a daredevil in you. You just need someone to bring out that side of you, is all."

"And you're happy to volunteer for the job, is that right?"

"Certainly."

She laughed at him, and tucked her arm in his as they started back down the path. "Come on, Daredevil. Let's go home."

Xxx

That night, he woke up disoriented in the darkness. Waking in the night was hardly unusual for him, but he'd been sleeping more soundly since he'd started sharing a bed with Lisbon, and he found himself being pulled unwillingly from a deep sleep. For once, though, it wasn't his own nightmares that woke him.

This time, it was Lisbon's.

She was thrashing around in her sleep, uttering choked little cries of distress that were heartbreaking to hear.

He switched on the bedside lamp and leaned over to rest a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Lisbon, wake up," he said softly.

She flinched at his touch and struck out, cuffing him on the side of the head.

He winced, and looked down at her. She was still asleep, reacting to her dream.

He rubbed his head. She had really good aim, even with her eyes closed.

He tried again. "Lisbon. Come on, it's me." He stroked her face gently. "Wake up."

She groaned and twisted her head away from him, lashing out again with her fists.

"Lisbon!" He grabbed her hands to prevent her from hitting him again, encircling her delicate wrists with his fingers.

Her eyes flew open and the next thing he knew, he was flat on his back with his hands over his head, pressed down against the mattress.

Lisbon was on top of him, breathing heavily.

He had a vague sense that she'd done something with her leg—hooked it around his knee, or something- and flipped him over in some kind of superwoman CBI agent judo move that resulted in him being pinned to the bed with his arms restrained before he could blink. Lisbon was sitting on him, pressed forward against him to keep his wrists from escaping the bounds of her own hands trapping them against the bed.

He lay very still. Obviously, it had been a mistake to try to restrain her. Her wrists had been bound for days—of course she would react badly to any attempt to restrict her freedom of movement. She'd been distraught even before he'd caught hold of her wrists—doing so had undoubtedly pushed her over the edge of distress into blind panic. It was completely natural that she should have lashed out against him as though he were the attacker of her nightmares. Really, he reflected, it was fortunate she'd settled for judoing his ass. Knowing Lisbon, she might have grabbed the gun out of her bedside table and shot him point blank before she'd come fully awake.

He lay still, and waited for her to return to full consciousness of her surroundings. She had him thoroughly restrained, and after what had just happened, he certainly wasn't going to struggle. It wouldn't do to set her off again, and anyway, there were worse things in the world than being pinned to a bed by Teresa Lisbon. In fact, he couldn't say that he was exactly put out by being restrained by her in this particular way. He'd definitely been less comfortable, in his life. She was soft and lithe against him, and he had a rather dazzling view of her breasts in the tank top she'd worn to bed from his current vantage point. He was surprised to find that in a way, having his control forcibly stripped from him by Lisbon was oddly appealing. At least in this particular context. His brain detoured for a moment, thinking of other circumstances that might lead them to being in a similar position.

Belatedly, he became aware of his body reacting to the thoughts flitting through his mind, not to mention the physical sensation of having Lisbon actually pressed against him. Oh no. This was so not the right time for—

Hastily, he tried to muster up the focus to call his biofeedback tricks into use, but it was hard to concentrate on anything other than the fact that Lisbon was sitting on his lap and he could see straight down the thin tank top she was wearing.

Too late.

He felt himself grow hard against her, and he knew she felt it too by her startled intake of breath as she met his gaze.

Her eyes went black.

He shifted slightly, thinking maybe it would be a good idea to make a bid for escape, after all, but she didn't give him a chance to even form the thought completely. She leaned forward and crushed her mouth to his, kissing him violently, her tongue demanding entry to his mouth and her teeth cruel as she bit his lower lip.

Stunned, he was too surprised to do anything but yield to her assault at first. But then she worked her tongue into his mouth and he tasted her. Nothing could have prepared him for that taste- the full, rich essence of her.

All rational thought left his head, and he kissed her back.

She laced her fingers through his, drawing him upwards, closer to her. Tentatively, he sat up, their hands locked together and his mouth never leaving hers.

God. He was kissing _Lisbon._ He'd always found her attractive, of course—she was an undeniably beautiful woman. There had been moments, over the years, when he'd looked over at her, interviewing a suspect or across the desk as she filled out paperwork and caught his breath at her loveliness. But he'd always kept it separate from his deepest self, somehow. Apart. He realized he'd always thought of Lisbon as a sort of unattainable, shining ideal in his mind—she was so strong, so _good_. He could admire her, bask in her glow, but he could never touch her beyond an innocent gesture, never be truly close to her. He could fantasize, daydream, but never act. Such a pure heart could not be allowed to be tainted by his dark influence.

He was a fool. Lisbon knew darkness. She had the memories of her own bleak youth snaking up to curl blackened tentacles around her heart, threatening to pull her into the abyss. She had her years with the SFPD, with the McTiers of the world hurting innocents as long as they eluded justice. She had the love of a married man she didn't love back weighing on her soul. She had her recent incarceration at the hands of a mad man, reminding her of her own mortality. She had fifteen years as a cop, facing death and murder every day, and untold years of loneliness, bearing up under it all by herself. The difference was, instead of being consumed by the darkness, as he had been, she had overcome it. Continued to overcome it, every day, committing herself to fighting for truth and light, stubbornly refusing to yield to that blackness that pressed in around her. It wasn't because the darkness was unknown, foreign to her. She knew it intimately, had drawn it closer to herself in order to defeat it a little more each day.

He opened his mouth and drank of her darkness. He drank deeply, greedily. She thought he was obsessed with revenge, but that was mere dabbling- this, _this_ was obsession, an addiction from which he would never, ever be cured.

He dipped his head to kiss the hollow of her throat, flicking his tongue against the rapidly throbbing pulse point in her neck.

She arched towards him with a moan, and though he felt her spine stiffen, it was a full five seconds before he realized something was wrong.

"Jane," she gasped, and he frowned into her neck. That wasn't a gasp of pleasure. She was in pain. He raised his head to meet her eyes. They were still dilated, but the green irises were clouded with anguish.

"What happened?" he asked sharply. "Teresa, what's wrong?"

"My ribs," she panted.

Reality crashed back over him. What the hell was he doing? Lisbon was in no shape to be engaging in this type of strenuous activity. He was supposed to be helping her heal, not causing her to backslide in her recovery because he had no self-control.

He pressed one more regretful kiss to her shoulder, then gently laid her back down beside him.

"What are you doing?" Lisbon said, still seemingly unable to catch her breath.

"Stopping you from injuring yourself further," he told her.

She struggled to sit up. "Jane, I'm fine. I just- moved wrong for a second there."

He gently pushed her back down onto her back. "Yes. You probably hurt yourself when you flipped me over, but didn't feel it right away because of the adrenaline from the nightmare. You'll have to go to the doctor tomorrow. We'll be lucky if you didn't re-crack any of those broken ribs."

"I don't need to go to the doctor. I'm fine."

He sighed. "Lisbon, why do you insist on lying to me when you know I can tell when you're not telling me the truth?"

"I'm not lying," she said stubbornly. "You're making too big a deal out of this."

"Right. I'm completely overreacting to the fact that you had a nightmare so bad that I couldn't wake you from it, and then possibly re-broke one of your ribs while making out with you not five minutes later."

"You didn't break my ribs," she huffed in annoyance. "God, you're a nuisance. I don't know why I even let you in my bed in the first place."

He raised his eyebrows. "Well, at least one of the reasons for that was made abundantly clear a few moments ago."

She lashed out at him again, her fist flashing towards his arm quick as lightning. "You son of a bitch," she seethed.

He caught her hand before it could do any more damage to his person or hers and trapped it against his chest. "Careful, Teresa. This is what got us into this situation in the first place."

She struggled to free her hand, but the effort obviously pained her and she was forced to give up after the first unsuccessful attempt. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You were having a nightmare, presumably about your recent captivity, and were thrashing around in your sleep. I tried to wake you, and you clocked me upside the head. I tried to grab your arms to prevent you from hitting me again, and found myself flat on my back with you on top of me. Which obviously I did not find unpleasant."

She grew still. "That's… not what happened."

"Oh really?" he asked, curious. "In your version of events, how did we end up with your tongue down my throat at three-thirty in the morning?"

"Never mind," she muttered.

"You don't remember, do you?" he said knowingly. "You weren't even fully awake until you started to come down from the adrenaline rush and your ribs started to hurt you again."

She covered her face with her free hand. "Oh, God."

He raised the hand he still held hostage to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to the palm. "No need to be embarrassed, Teresa. You acquitted yourself quite well in the kissing department, even if you don't remember exactly how it came about."

She yanked her hand away from him, and turned away from him, her mouth drawn into a tight line.

He looked over at her. She was mortified, still scared from her dream, and in pain. "I'm going to get you a painkiller," he told her.

"I don't want one," she said, her voice muffled by the fact that she was effectively speaking into her pillow.

"Don't be ridiculous, Lisbon. Don't you get enough of the heroics at work? You're in pain, and you need medicine."

"I hate how those things make me feel," she grumbled.

He sighed. "Fine. At least let me help you, then."

"I don't need your help."

"Lisbon, you're being irrational. You're never going to be able to go back to sleep like this. I can help you with the pain."

"I don't want you hypnotizing me," she said stubbornly. "I hate the idea of you poking around in my head."

Especially right now. The words remained unspoken, but they hung heavily in the air.

Jane ignored them. He took her hand again, and began rubbing gentle circles on the pressure point between her thumb and index finger. "Lisbon, of course I'm not going to hypnotize you."

"Don't think you're fooling me with that trick again," she said incredulously.

"I'm not hypnotizing you, Lisbon," he repeated. "It's way too much work to hypnotize an angry person, and you know I'm much too lazy to work that hard. I just want to take away the pain. I want you to think about the pain, and I want you to imagine it as little beads of light that you can collect. You can take the pain from anywhere in your body, and collect it in one place. Once you've collected it, I want you to push those tiny beads of light towards your hand, the hand that I'm holding right now. You're going to push them down your arm one at a time, and through your hand, down to each of your fingertips. But once they get to the ends of your fingertips, they are going to fall out of your hand and into mine. They aren't going to hurt me, though. I'm just going to collect them, and once I have them all, then I'm going to throw them away. You are going to remain completely conscious of everything I'm doing until the last bead of light leaves your hand, Lisbon, and then you're going to fall asleep. You're going to fall into a deep sleep and you are not going to dream, Lisbon."

She squeezed his hand violently. "Stop it," she said through clenched teeth. "I know what you're doing."

He continued on calmly, ignoring his own pain as she did her best to crush the bones of his hand. That was good—she had all the pain focused there in her hand, now, and the rest of her body was relaxing despite itself. "That's it, Lisbon, just let the last of the pain go," he said soothingly. "You're almost there. Just send that last bit of pain to me, right into my hand, and don't worry. I don't want you to worry, Lisbon. I am not hypnotizing you. You are going to remember everything. When you wake up, you are going to remember _exactly_ how pissed off you are at me."

"You bastard," she ground out. "I'm going to kill you for this." And then she passed out.

He leaned over and stroked her hair. "Sleep, Teresa. We'll talk when you're rested."


	11. Chapter 11

When he woke, his arm was outstretched across the expanse of empty bedclothes; he'd been reaching for her in his sleep.

His fingers touched cool sheet, but Lisbon hadn't left the bed. She was still asleep, curled up so close to the edge of the bed it was a wonder she hadn't fallen off it.

In other words, she had shifted as far away from him as possible.

He inched cautiously towards her. He laid a hand on her arm and she stiffened as she woke to his touch. "Lisbon?" He leaned forward and tentatively dropped a kiss to her shoulder. "How are you feeling?"

She went still under his lips. "Fine," she said shortly, sliding away from him and getting out of bed without looking at him.

He sighed as she locked herself in the bathroom and turned the shower on. Really, it was about as good of a reaction as he had any right to expect. It was bound to get worse, however, once she actually had to face him. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, considering his predicament, and then got up to make breakfast. She had to eat sometime, after all.

He put forth his best effort, but even with his best predictive abilities at work, he miscalculated how long she would dawdle in an effort to avoid him, and the eggs were cold by the time she came downstairs.

Undaunted, he threw the eggs out and started in on a batch of pancakes. He rummaged through her cupboards for flour, making a mental note that he needed to go to the store soon to restock on groceries. They were running low. He'd better wait a bit, though—if he left now, she might interpret that as license to lock him out for good.

She came downstairs wearing her favorite jeans and a turtleneck that he knew she hated. _Armor_, he thought. To protect herself from him. He couldn't say it was exactly surprising, but nonetheless, he found it rather depressing that her unconscious instinct was to defend herself against him.

"How are your ribs?" he asked with false cheerfulness, stirring the batter for the pancakes.

"Fine," she bit out.

"Not sore?"

"No," she snapped.

He actually couldn't tell if she was lying or not. The anger was eclipsing her usual tells. That was a bad sign. "We should probably go to the doctor anyway, just to be safe. You might need to have x-rays again."

"Jane, shut up about the damn doctor! My ribs are fine."

They probably weren't, he decided, or she wouldn't be so defensive about it. Still, it would probably be prudent to make a tactical retreat for the time being on the issue of the doctor, and approach the subject again later, when she was more calm. "Okay."

She folded her arms across her chest. "Is that all you have to say for yourself?"

He looked at her warily. "Well, I suppose we ought to talk about what happened last night." When she didn't say anything, he took it upon himself to prompt her. He set the mixing bowl down on the counter and dusted the flour off his slacks. "Go ahead, Lisbon, I'm ready. Fire away."

"You son of a bitch," she seethed. "I can't believe you hypnotized me."

This wasn't the element of the evening he'd expected her to fixate on. "I was trying to help you!"

"Yes, I find it so helpful when someone tries to _rob me of my free will_, just to avoid dealing with me," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Are you crazy?" Jane demanded, incredulous. "When have I ever backed down from a confrontation, Lisbon? You're the one who likes to run away when things get too deep for you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Just what I say. You're the one who ran away to California after Greg proposed; you left San Francisco when you started to realize Bosco's feelings for you; and now you're so afraid to talk about what happened to you in the mountains that you'd rather suffer through horrible nightmares than actually share your feelings with me."

"You want me to share my feelings? That's a bit rich, coming from you."

"I'm not sure what you mean by that, Lisbon, but I can assure you—"

"You're not sure what it means?" she said angrily. "What the fuck do you think it means? It means you _never_ tell me what is going on in that warped mind of yours. Forget your usual habit of hiding up in the attic unless I drag you downstairs—let's just look at the last few weeks. You stage this marathon bedside vigil at the hospital, practically move in with me, buy me clothes, and want to sleep in my bed, but you never say a damn word about why you're even there in the first place. You just go along, wanting to cuddle up close at night and refusing to leave, but the second I make a move, you can't get away fast enough."

"The second you make a move?" he repeated incredulously. "Your move was to attack me in your sleep!"

"And then you hypnotized me to avoid the situation."

"That's ridiculous. You were in pain and being stubborn about it. I hypnotized you for your own good."

"You _violated _me by hypnotizing me when I expressly told you not to so you could get away from me."

This was so ludicrous as to be laughable. "That's some pretty interesting revisionist history you've got going on there, Lisbon. If you recall, I didn't run away. I stayed with you, and would have held you if you'd let me. You were the one trying to get away."

She didn't appear to be listening to him. "God, this is so like you. You only want to move forward when it's on your terms. You only want contact with me when you get to be the one in control!"

"Lisbon," he said, looking her in the eye. "You are missing the point. If you want to handcuff me to the bed and have your way with me, all you have to do is name the day and time and I'll be there."

Her eyes went dark again for a moment at the image he'd planted in her head, but she shook herself out of it and glared at him. "In your dreams, Jane."

"Now you're ready to talk about dreams? Great. Let's go for it. I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," he shot back. He took note of the darkened eyes and filed that tidbit away for later, however.

"What is this goddamned obsession you have with my dreams, Jane? So I had a nightmare. Big deal. It happens."

"It's a big deal because I hate seeing you suffer when I'm certain talking about it would help."

"Join the damn club, Jane!" she shouted. "How the hell do you think I feel most of the time about you and your fixation on Red John?"

"That has nothing to do with this! You're just trying to distract me from the real issue here. Well, it's not going to work, Teresa, so you tell me. What exactly about last night is bothering you so much? Why, in your words, is this such a big deal?"

"It's a big deal because I kissed you and your reaction was to pat me on the head and hypnotize me into going to sleep so I would leave you alone!" she snapped.

"That," Jane said flatly, "is absolutely the craziest thing anyone has ever said to me. I kissed you back, remember?"

"You ended it!"

Jane shook his head. How she could possibly be interpreting his actions as rejection was completely beyond him. He'd moved in with her, for God's sake! And he'd definitely been a more than willing participant in the kissing until he'd realized she'd hurt her ribs again. "I ended it because you were hurt," he said. "What was I supposed to do? Molest you after you cried out in pain?"

She stuck out her chin stubbornly. "I'm a big girl, Jane. I would have told you if I wanted you to stop."

"The thing is, Lisbon," Jane said slowly. "I'm not sure you were entirely conscious of what you were doing."

She stopped. "What?"

"You were half out of your mind from that damn nightmare, and you were confused, disoriented. Panic was your first instinct when I touched you, and then you grabbed hold of me because I was the closest thing that could help you forget."

She looked away. "No, I didn't."

He stepped closer to her, close enough to smell her freshly-showered scent and feel the heat of her body radiating off her in waves. "You think I've never thought about it?" he said in a low voice. She looked up at him, startled by his proximity, and he met her gaze. "You think I never thought about how wonderful it would be, to lose myself in you, to forget about the pain for a little while?" He searched her face. "I've done a lot of rotten things, Lisbon, but of all the things I've done in my life, one thing I can honestly say I've never done was use you as a distraction. And I'll be damned if I'll let you use me as one."

She deflated somewhat. "Jane, I… I never meant to use you as a distraction."

"I know," he said gently. "And consciously, you never would."

She covered her face with her hands. "God. I am so messed up."

He moved forward and tentatively wrapped his arms around her. "You are not. You're an amazing woman who is having a rough time."

"I attacked you in my sleep," she said into his chest, her voice muffled.

"A perfectly natural reaction," he reassured her. "I should never have grabbed your wrists."

"I meant the other thing," she muttered.

"Oh. Well, technically, that was sort of my fault, too."

She looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

"Ah—well, let me put it this way. You probably would never have kissed me if you hadn't noticed how… intriguing I found the experience of being pinned to the bed by you," he said delicately.

"Intriguing?" Lisbon echoed. "What the hell does that me—" she broke off, flushing scarlet. "Oh."

"Exactly," he said, rubbing soothing circles on her back. "I know you were kind of out of it last night, Lisbon, but really, I think I'm a bit offended that you found the evidence of my, uh, interest in you so unimpressive that you forgot about it completely."

She pulled away and hit him on the chest. "Shut up."

He took the hand she had hit him with and kissed the palm. "How could you think I didn't want you?"

She looked startled. "I—what?"

He raised his eyebrows. "I mean, haven't I been pretty obvious?"

"What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.

"Lisbon, I invited myself to move in with you. I co-opted your bed. Wasn't it pretty clear that I wanted to move into something more than 'just friends' status?"

She gaped at him. "No."

"Lisbon, I tried to get you to let me shampoo your hair. I offered to help you with your jammies. I practically forced you to cuddle with me every chance I got."

"Well, yeah, but…" she trailed off, looking uncertain.

"But what?" he prompted. "Wouldn't you normally interpret those actions as clues that a man had a more than friendly interest in you?"

She huffed in exasperation. "You're not exactly typical, Jane."

"Lisbon, I was sending signals out to sea, and nothing was coming back. I was waiting for you to give me some indication that you wouldn't slug me if I tried to make a move, as you put it, and so far all I'd received was the fact that you hadn't actually kicked me out yet." He rubbed his head where she'd hit him the night before. "Little did I know that you prefer to do the hitting first, _then_ move on to the kissing."

Lisbon stared at him. "But you never… before, I mean. You never seemed to think of me that way. I mean, you flirted with me, but…"

"But what?" he said again, exasperated. "Why do you think I flirted with you so much, Lisbon? To disguise my deep and abiding attraction to Rigsby?"

She brushed this aside. "You flirt with everybody."

"Not like I do with you," he said flatly.

She shook her head. "It's different. You only ever started acting like this after Taggart took me."

He sighed. "Have you ever heard the expression, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder?'"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"Well, in this case, absence, characterized by kidnap and torture, made the heart realize it was already pretty darn fond and that life is brutally short, particularly for those of us that work with violent criminals for a living, so the heart had better get its act together before it misses its chance."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying if you wanted to kiss me now, Lisbon, I wouldn't think you were trying to use me as a distraction." He took a deep breath. "And if I kissed you, I wouldn't be using you as one, either."

She exhaled. "I thought you were having some sort of weird post-traumatic stress reaction to the whole kidnapping thing."

Thinking of his mini-panic attack when she'd told him about how she'd escaped from Taggart, he admitted ruefully, "You may not have been entirely wrong about that."

"I mean, I knew you cared about me," she continued. "We've been friends a long time. But you never even confided in me completely, let alone expressed anything resembling, uh, romantic interest, until after I got kidnapped."

"Of course I care about you. I have for a long time. This whole thing with Taggart just sort of threw it all into relief." He passed a hand over his eyes, unable to even think about it without the familiar knot of dread twisting around in his insides. "God, I hope I never have to go through anything like that again. I'd never have forgiven myself if something had happened to you because of me."

"Because of you?" she echoed. "What do you mean?"

"Well, it's likely that none of this would have ever happened if I had gone with you to interview Taggart like you wanted," he pointed out.

A look he couldn't quite interpret flashed over her face. "Wait a minute. This whole time, you've been feeling _guilty _about Taggart getting hold of me?"

"Well, yeah," Jane said, sensing danger but not sure which direction would be least likely to result in him stepping on a landmine. "He might not have attacked you if you hadn't been alone when you went to see him."

Her face contorted in rage. He didn't have any trouble interpreting that look, though he didn't understand the reason for it. "Get out," she said harshly.

"What? Lisbon, what's wrong? I thought we were working through this whole thing. Let's just finish our talk and-"

"Talk's over." She started shoving him towards the door. "Get out. Now."

She really was a credit to her physical therapy instructor, he thought as she manhandled him towards the door. Still, after last night's exertions, it probably wasn't the best idea for her to be risking further damage to her ribs through more violent physical activity. With this in mind, he offered minimal resistance as she pushed him towards the door, and saved his energy for verbal protests. "Lisbon, stop this, you're going to hurt yourself again."

"I can take care of myself, Jane," she snarled. "If my ribs are broken again, it will be my _own damn fault_. Nothing for you to worry about."

"Of course I would worry about it," he said as she yanked the door open and shoved him through it. "I wouldn't want cracked ribs ruining the moment for us again, once we get back to the whole kissing thing."

"Don't trouble yourself. That whole kissing thing really isn't on the horizon anymore," she snapped, and slammed the door in his face.

He stood there for a moment, contemplating his next move. He pondered picking the lock and letting himself back in, but no sooner had the thought formed in his head than he heard the scrape of wood being dragged across the floor and then a thud as she shoved the desk against the door, effectively barricading him out. "You really shouldn't be moving furniture in your condition!" he called through the door.

"Go away, Jane!" she yelled back.

Clearly, he was going to have to let her calm down before he was going to have any hope of arguing with her. And hopefully talking her back into a kissing frame of mind. Really, they'd been making good progress until she'd flown off the handle at the end there. Honestly, she was being completely unreasonable, he thought, annoyed. "Fine," he huffed. "I'm leaving. But Lisbon?"

"What?" she demanded.

"Go to the damn doctor!" he shouted through the key hole.


	12. Chapter 12

He got in his car, fuming, and turned on the engine.

He made it to the end of the block before he realized he had no idea what to do with himself.

He turned right when another car came up behind him and honked, and drove aimlessly for awhile. He could go to the office, he supposed, but the others were bound to ask about Lisbon, and he definitely didn't feel like explaining what had happened to anyone else. He drove around moodily for a couple hours, but then he saw a billboard advertising a new winery in Napa Valley and suddenly driving lost its appeal.

Finally, he ended up back at his old hotel. He'd never stopped paying for the room, so he went in, eyeing the place with distaste. It really was awful. Dingy, barren. No kitchen. No soft green bedspread on the bed... no Lisbon.

He shook his head free of the thought and scowled. There wasn't even a couch. How he had lived here for the better part of nine years was beyond him. He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He'd fallen in love with a lunatic. He'd been being sweet, dammit, and she'd kicked him out for no reason. Well, he'd been trying, anyway. Sweet wasn't something that came naturally to him, after all. Manipulative, yet supportive, he decided. That was probably a better description for him. Still, this wasn't his fault. He'd been positively open with her, trying to explain how he felt, and she'd physically ejected him from her apartment. Because of some off-hand comment about feeling guilty, of all things. Just when he'd thought they'd been close to a breakthrough, she completely lost her temper and pushed him out the door. Well, he was mad, too. If she'd just _listened_, they could have worked their way back to the kissing, eventually. He could still taste her on his tongue, the memory just vivid enough to remind him of the intensity of her touch; faded enough to let him know nothing less than the real thing would satisfy him. But now it seemed she had no intention of kissing him ever again. One stolen moment in the middle of the night, that was all he was going to get. Damn straight he was mad.

Yeah.

He lasted until six o clock that evening before he gave up. Resigned, he glanced around the hotel room in disgust. He collected his few remaining belongings, threw them into the back of his car, and then went to the front desk and checked out. He drove to the grocery store—the expensive, organic one—and was back at Lisbon's by eight.

His arms laden with grocery bags, he knocked on the door softly, uncertain about his reception, especially given the way she'd thrown him out earlier. Still, Lisbon was notorious about forgetting to eat—maybe she'd at least let him in to drop off the food, and then he could go from there. If he could at least get a foot in the door, he might be able to convince her to let him stay.

The door opened, and he noted that there had been no tell-tale scrape of wood against the floor signaling that she had to move the desk away from the door before she opened it. He wasn't sure what that meant, but he decided to interpret it as a hopeful sign.

When she opened the door, he did a quick scan of her face to assess the likelihood of her hitting him while his arms were too full to defend himself.

She looked awful. Her face was tired and drawn, and she was entirely too pale, her eyes slightly red. Belatedly, Jane realized that she'd been crying. That was a bad sign. Lisbon never cried.

"Lisbon," he breathed, horrified. Without pausing to think, he dumped the grocery bags on the desk by the door and walked forward to encircle her in his arms. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." He didn't exactly know what he was apologizing for, but he was sorry, that they had fought, and that he had upset her.

Surprisingly, she didn't protest, and let him put his arms around her without fighting him. "I'm sorry, too," she said into his chest.

They stood there for a long moment, and then Lisbon sighed and stepped back, taking his hand and tugging him towards the couch. "Come on. I have some stuff I need to tell you."

He followed, keeping his hand in hers when they sat down next to each other on the couch. "I'm really sorry," he said again. "I don't understand what I did to upset you, but I'm sorry. I don't want…" He swallowed. "I don't want you to be upset because of something I've said, or done. Just tell me what it is, and I'll fix it."

She took a deep breath. "All right."

Well, this was new. Jane thought this might be the first time in living memory that he'd approached Lisbon on emotional territory and she hadn't shut down on him on pure instinct. He squeezed her hand encouragingly.

"After you left," she said hesitatingly. "I kind of had my own little panic attack."

He looked at her sharply. "You did?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Not like yours—with the breathing, and everything. I just started crying all of a sudden and couldn't stop." She looked put out by this, and Jane found it oddly endearing that she was so unaccustomed to crying that she seemed almost offended by the existence of her own tears.

"So… more like an emotional breakdown than a panic attack," he said.

She looked annoyed. "Well, yeah. I guess. Anyway, that took awhile, but eventually it stopped."

Jane rolled his eyes. "Wow, you really suck at emotional breakdowns, Lisbon."

"Excuse me?" she said, sounding offended.

"Seriously? Your summary of this emotionally harrowing moment is 'it took awhile, but eventually it stopped?'"

"Well, what am I supposed to say?" she said, irritated.

"Well, you could tell me what you were thinking and feeling that prompted the whole emotional breakdown in the first place," he suggested.

"Obviously, I was upset about our fight," she said, definitely annoyed now. "Why do you need me to tell you that? You were there."

Jane closed his eyes, willing himself to have patience. "Humor me."

"Fine. I was mad, okay?"

"Right. That part, I got."

She let out another breath. "So, I was angry at you. But then after you left, I realized I was… not very happy that you were gone."

"Why didn't you call me?" he demanded. "I would have been back here in a flash."

"Because I was still mad, and I was kind of freaked out that I was that upset about you being gone when I literally threw you out," she admitted.

That made sense, actually. Of course independent Lisbon would be horrified at the idea of needing anyone else. Especially him. "Okay. So then what happened?"

"I went to the doctor."

He exhaled in relief. "What did he say?"

"He said I didn't break my ribs again, but I should probably lay off the nocturnal gymnastics for a couple more weeks," she said, blushing. "I think he thought I hurt myself having sex."

"Well, sex and violence are often closely intertwined," Jane mused absently. "But he said you were all right?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I'm a bit sore, but not a lot worse than I was feeling before."

"Thank you for telling me that," Jane said sincerely. "And thank you for going to the doctor."

She shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, well. It seemed important to you."

"It was," he confirmed.

She pulled her hand away from him to rake it through her hair. "Anyway, after that, I called that therapist the hospital recommended to me and asked her for an appointment."

Jane stared at her. "You went to talk to a psychologist? Voluntarily?"

"Yeah. I was still feeling kind of edgy, you know? And I clearly wasn't doing a good job of sorting out the mess in my head on my own, so I thought maybe it would help to talk to someone."

"I'm impressed," he told her truthfully. "I don't know if I would be able to get myself to walk into a room alone with a psychologist, if I were you, after what the last one did to you. I'm surprised you were able to trust one enough to talk to her."

She looked up guiltily. "I drugged her coffee," she admitted, shame-faced.

"What?" Jane said, shocked. "You, Teresa Lisbon, drugged an innocent civilian without cause?"

She nodded. "With sodium pentothol."

"Truth serum?" Jane said, even more surprised. "Where'd you get it?"

She shrugged. "Cho knows a guy."

Jane started to laugh. "Let me guess. You interrogated her before you would tell her a damn thing."

"Only for the first hour or so," Lisbon said defensively.

He raised his eyebrows. "The first hour?"

"I asked her to clear her afternoon for me. I figured it would take awhile."

He grinned. "So tell me about the interrogation."

She sighed. "Pretty much the usual—friends, family, habits. Plus, I asked what she knew about the Red John case."

Jane sobered. He hadn't thought of that. The thought of Lisbon confessing her innermost thoughts to one of Red John's creatures was horrifying indeed. He was suddenly deeply grateful for Cho's mysterious friend and his suspiciously easy access to barbiturates.

"She didn't know anything," Lisbon continued. "I mean, sodium pentothal doesn't work like truth serum in the movies, where people literally can't speak a lie. It just lowers a person's inhibitions, makes them less likely to make up false stories. Anyway, it was obvious she didn't have any sinister intentions. She kept telling me she was worried about her son. She was worried he was getting in with a bad crowd. She kept apologizing for bringing it up. She got really upset at the idea that she was ruining the session by being unprofessional."

"Poor woman," Jane said sympathetically.

"Yeah. I felt pretty bad about it. I wasn't going to tell her, originally, about what I'd done to her, but by the end of the hour I felt so guilty I couldn't let her go on like that. The drug had pretty much worn off by then. I told her she wasn't being unprofessional, she was just reacting to the drugs in her system. She was confused at first, so I told her I had drugged her coffee."

"What did she say?" Jane asked, fascinated.

Lisbon shrugged. "Nothing, at first. She was too stunned to talk, I think. I apologized and told her she could have my badge for what I'd done, and that she was perfectly within her rights to call the police and have me arrested."

Jane shook his head, an image of Lisbon calmly offering up her career to this woman in payment for her misdeed clear in his mind. "Of course you did. You make a rotten criminal, Lisbon. What was her reaction to your little confession?"

Lisbon frowned. "She was quiet for a long moment, and then finally she just asked me why I had done it."

"What'd you tell her?"

"I explained about how Carmen drugged me and tried to frame me for murder, and that since then, psychologists tended to make me a bit nervous. She was quiet again for awhile after that, and then she just said she could certainly understand that I might find it difficult to trust individuals in the profession of psychology after that, and that I must have something particularly important I wanted to talk about to want to overcome that experience, even if the way I was going about it wasn't exactly by the book."

"Nice," Jane said, impressed. "She must have loved the idea of getting her little psychologist hooks into a headcase like you."

Lisbon glared at him, but ignored the headcase comment. "She wasn't like that. She was… nice."

Jane surveyed her. "Still feeling guilty, huh?"

Lisbon shuddered. "I feel horrible. I can't believe I did that. I risked my career to essentially browbeat this kindly middle-aged lady who was trying to help me."

"So did she? Help you, I mean?"

"Yeah," Lisbon said. "She did." She paused. "She was really nice, Jane. I haven't met anyone like that in a long time. She didn't have an agenda, any ulterior motives. She just wanted to help me. Even after she found out I basically poisoned her, she wanted to help me. Have you ever just been knocked over by someone's kindness like that?"

Every day since I met you, he wanted to say, but knew the time wasn't quite right. That would take them down another path, and for now, he wanted to hear the rest of her story. "Yes," he said simply. "Go on."

"Well, I told her about how I freaked out at you and kicked you out, and then freaked out about you being gone, which obviously she didn't understand, so I had to go back, and tell her about our fight, and explain how you were staying with me, and everything. I told her about what happened with Taggart. Then of course I had to give her background, so I explained about where we work, and about Red John, and everything." She let out a breath. "I talked a long time. I don't think I've ever talked that long in my life."

"What'd she say to all that?" Jane wanted to know.

"Well, at first she was pretty quiet, trying to process everything I'd just unloaded on her. Piece everything together, I mean. I don't think I was being particularly coherent when I told her all that stuff." She shook her head. "It can't have made much sense, me telling it to her all backwards like that. I probably should have started at the beginning. But that seemed like too much, at first, so I thought I would just stick to the most current issues."

"But all the current issues are connected to the past, so you had to explain a lot of extra stuff so it would make any sense to her at all," he reflected.

She nodded. "Right."

"You still haven't told me why you were so angry in the first place."

"It's... complicated."

"I can do complicated, Lisbon. Just don't shut me out again."

"Dr. Jennings—that's her name, Caroline Jennings- she told me I've been gearing up for some kind of, I don't know—"

"Emotional breakdown?" Jane supplied.

She glared at him. "Yes. She said I've been working myself up to some kind of emotional boiling point for kind of awhile now."

"Ever since Taggart took you."

"Pretty much. Obviously, there was all the aftermath from that to deal with, but she said that there was something else complicating things in my case."

"What was that?"

She took a deep breath. "She said I was pretty wound up because of what she called your 'recently increased presence in my life.' Apparently my brain was so busy trying to figure out the drastic changes in your behavior that I wasn't processing what happened with Taggart properly at all."

"Great. So by trying to help you, I was making things worse," Jane said, frowning.

"No, Jane," she said gently. "She said I was lucky to have someone so supportive in my life, and that it was obvious that you cared about me a great deal. She said she was glad I had someone taking care of me after everything that happened, because recovering from something like that is no picnic in any case, but it would be infinitely worse to do it alone."

Jane was not mollified by this. "But me being around so much was causing you undue stress."

She sighed. "It's more complicated than that, Jane. It was just a lot of stuff hitting me all at once, that's all. Apparently I couldn't cope with it all at the same time, so my brain had to figure out some way of sorting through everything in manageable pieces."

"Such as?"

"For one thing, Dr. Jennings said that in cases of physical trauma, psychological responses are often delayed until after the body has begun to heal. Now that I've started to improve physically, it's not uncommon to experience something like that dream I had last night seemingly out of the blue. Less of my energy is going towards healing, so my brain is freed up to react emotionally. She said the reason I was having so much trouble is because I was reacting to two significant emotional situations at once."

Jane winced. "Taggart and me." He hated the thought being paired with that man in Lisbon's mind for any reason, let alone as someone equally culpable of inflicting emotional trauma on her.

"Right. Anyway, apparently my brain decided you were the easier issue to deal with because you were right there, demanding my attention all the time. It was easier to push the whole thing with Taggart to the back of my mind—he was dead. I'd left him behind in the mountains."

"So your waking brain was occupied trying to deal with me, and your subconscious sent you dreams of Taggart to deal with in your down time while you were asleep," Jane surmised.

"Well… yeah, basically. So last night was kind of a double whammy," Lisbon said, blushing.

Jane shook his head. "I'll say."

"Anyway, I was hyped up from the dream, and then, you know, the kissing happened—"

"Yes, I remember that part," Jane interrupted.

"And then I was hurt because I thought you believed it was a mistake, and instead of giving me time to figure it out—"

"I hypnotized you," Jane finished for her. Boy, he really was an idiot. He knew Lisbon needed control to feel safe. He'd let go of her wrists, all right, but then he'd turned around taken control from her in a completely different way. "I'm sorry, Lisbon. It never occurred to me that you would ever think I stopped kissing you because I didn't want to. I just didn't want you to be in pain anymore."

"I know, Jane," she told him. "Dr. Jennings made me go through the whole sequence of events in order, after I told her about our fight, and she pointed out that every single thing you'd said or done was in at least some way an effort to reassure me. I was just so upset that I couldn't see that, at first."

He reached out and touched her hand. "What about the rest of it? I mean, the hypnotizing thing, I get, but that bit at the end… not so much."

She slid her hand away from his and didn't meet his eyes. "You'd been so great, cooking for me, letting me pick out what movies we would watch together, but it was like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then when you said that thing about being guilty, it felt like that was what had happened. That suddenly you weren't there for me, you were there because of the guilt. Like you were having a love affair with guilt, and I just happened to be in the middle of it. I already hate how much you let guilt rule you, because of what happened to your family, and I couldn't stand the idea of you using me as an excuse to feel guilty about some other damn thing."

Jane looked down at his hands. It was true. He did feel guilty, so much of the time. Had he started to default to it out of habit, just because it was easy? If that were the case, he could hardly blame Lisbon for getting angry at what she essentially interpreted as him as putting her second to his own self-condemnation. He thought about how he would feel if he'd thought Lisbon was spending time with him out of some misplaced sense of guilt. He frowned. He'd hate it. "Lisbon, I—okay, yes, I felt guilty. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I did. I hate the thought that I could have prevented what happened to you if I had just gone with you to that interview like you wanted. But I was here for _you_. Not because of the guilt, but because I wanted to be there for you. I would have been here, no matter what."

"I know you would have," she said softly. "Now, I do."

"I shouldn't have let you kick me out," Jane said. He should have seen what she was going through and stayed to help her.

Lisbon shook her head. "No. Dr. Jennings said it was good that I had made you leave, because I'd been using you as a distraction to avoid thinking about what Taggart did to me, and the only way I was ever going to process it all was if I had a break from you and let some of my other thoughts have a chance to make it to the front of my brain."

"Do you want me to go, then?" he asked, his heart sinking.

Lisbon fidgeted. "No. She said—she said it would be okay if you stayed, if we resolved a few things between us. She thought if we talked about some of our issues, then I wouldn't be so, um, distracted, and would be able to focus on some of the other stuff."

"Okay," Jane said. He would talk. He would talk about his issues until the sun came up, if it meant Lisbon would let him stay. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Oh, well—she—Dr. Jennings, I mean—she seemed to think it was important that I tell you some of what I've been feeling recently."

Jane made a mental note to send Dr. Jennings a nice bouquet of flowers in gratitude. Or perhaps a new car. "Go on."

She took a deep breath. "Well, I was really glad you stayed with me, in the hospital."

He shook his head. "What did you think, that I was going to leave you there alone?"

"You could have," she pointed out. "You're not my boyfriend or my husband. I didn't expect you to stay."

"Of course I was going to stay," he said, exasperated.

She shot him an annoyed look. "I'm just trying to say I'm grateful, okay? It meant a lot to me that you stayed. At the hospital, and afterwards."

"But?"

"But what?"

"Obviously, there's a but at the end of that sentence, Lisbon, or we wouldn't be having this conversation."

She fidgeted again. "But, well… it was scary."

"Scary?" he repeated. He'd never heard Lisbon use that word before. It sounded strange coming from her lips. Like a fierce tigress admitting she was afraid of a mouse.

"Yeah." She raked a hand through her hair again. "God, I mean, you can be so perfect when you want to be, you know that, Jane? You were being so damn sweet about everything. You were so different than the usual pain in the ass you are normally, and I didn't know what to do about it. It made me realize—"

She stopped. "Realize what?" Jane prompted.

She met his eyes. "It made me realize how good it could be, if things were different."

His heart was thumping loudly in his chest. "Different how?"

She sighed. "If we had different lives, I suppose. If we didn't work together. If you hadn't dedicated your life to revenge. If Red John wasn't in the picture at all. If I wasn't, you know, me."

"What does that mean?" Jane demanded. "If you weren't you?"

"You know. Able to be close to someone."

"Lisbon, don't be ridiculous. Of course you're capable of being close to someone. Just because you've never tried before—"

"Don't you see?" she interrupted him. "That's the whole point. I've never had that. I don't know how to do it. Having you around scared the crap out of me, because it made me realize how much I wanted that." She exhaled. "And I had no idea what to do about it."

Jane sat back. "And Dr. Jennings thinks you were so consumed by worrying about this that everything that happened with Taggart took a backseat."

Lisbon tried to reassure him. "She said that wasn't necessarily a bad sign, because it meant I was more preoccupied with life and love than hate and death."

He looked up sharply at that. "Life and love, huh?"

She blushed. "Well, yeah. I mean, for God's sake, Jane, you anticipated my every need and met each one before I was even conscious of having it. Plus, you're a terrible flirt. And you were constantly underfoot, wanting to cuddle. Don't you know anything about women at all? We tend to find it kind of hard to resist that sort of package."

Jane processed this. "So you didn't really want me to leave?"

"I was tying myself in knots because I was afraid of how much I wanted you to stay. And how hard it was going to be when you finally did leave."

"You tried to kick me out," he pointed out. "Before, I mean. You tried to get me to move back to my hotel."

She looked down. "It was easier to kick you out than wait around for you to leave."

"Lisbon, why on earth would you think I wanted to leave?" he asked, exasperated.

She shrugged. "I don't know. I just figured it was only a matter of time before you got bored, or distracted, or something. I had this vision of you just looking up one day and realizing this wasn't what you wanted."

He opened his mouth to contradict her, but she continued before he could get a word in. "I mean, things have been relatively calm since this whole thing with Taggart started, but who was I kidding? I knew the minute we got another break in the Red John case, this weird spell you've been under would be broken and you would want to go back to your attic to brood in peace."

The words, 'and shut me out once again' remained unspoken, but Jane knew that was the key fear underpinning Lisbon's conflicted attitude towards him. He snapped his jaw shut.

He deserved that. Yes, he'd been constantly present and attentive, but only since Lisbon's abduction had forced him to realize how utterly incapable he was of continuing to function without her. Before that, he'd always left Lisbon to fend for herself, taking her unwavering support for granted without bothering to repay her in kind.

No wonder she thought he was going to disappear the first time something shiny came along to capture his interest. That was his standard mode of operation, wasn't it? How many times had Lisbon turned to speak to him at a crime scene, only to find he'd wandered off to pursue his own interests? And his record was even worse when it came to anything related to Red John.

He remembered how reluctant she had been to participate when he'd made her do that trust fall with him, several years ago. He'd persuaded her, in the end, but she'd disliked the exercise. To his immense displeasure, he could see how the analogy could still be applied. She must have thought that if she was ever truly in danger of falling, the likelihood of him being there to save him was sketchy at best. She couldn't count on him. If she fell, she had no way of knowing whether he would catch her, or whether she would only realize he had gone once she had already fallen into the void.

"I checked out of my hotel," he blurted out.

She stared, taken aback. "What?"

"I checked out of my hotel," he repeated. "All my stuff is in the back of my car. I'll be better, Lisbon, I swear it. I know I withdraw into myself when we get Red John cases. I can't promise to transform overnight, but I will try to be better about telling you what's on my mind. I still may not tell you everything I'm planning, but I'll try to let you know if I intend to pull a disappearing act on you when we're on our usual cases."

She blinked. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying… if we get another Red John case, I will brood in your spare room. If you'll have me, that is."

She looked as though she'd been pole-axed. "You will?"

"Yes. Don't you realize I've been scheming ways to get you to let me stay with you since before we left the hospital?"

"You have?"

"Of course."

"Why?"

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I'm in love with you, Lisbon. What the hell did you think?"

"I thought you were experiencing some kind of temporary insanity," she admitted.

He thought of the words she'd used earlier. "And that it was only a matter of time before the spell would be broken?"

"Well… yeah," she said, embarrassed.

He took her hands in his. "It's not a spell, Lisbon."

She gripped his hands back. "Okay."

He continued. "It's more like… an enduring enchantment."

She wrinkled her nose. "An enchantment?"

"Yes. I don't think there's a counterspell for it, though. I'm pretty sure it's incurable."

"Way to make it sound like some kind of undesirable affliction," Lisbon said dryly.

He glared at her, annoyed at her complete failure to be moved by his romantic turn of phrase. Why did she always have to be so difficult? A normal woman would find his clever metaphor charming and adorable. He looked at her, so much more complicated and infinitely more interesting than any normal woman ever could be, and abandoned his irritation without a second thought. They still had things they needed to work out between them, and Lisbon still needed time to heal, but he was starting to feel hopeful that everything was going to work out for them in the end. He arched an elegant brow at her. "Did I say it was undesirable?"

Her mouth curved into a slow smile. "I suppose not. I believe the word you used was 'intriguing.'"

He grinned at her. "Believe it or not, Lisbon, I've been intrigued by you for a long time."

She laughed outright at this. "You're ridiculous." And then his strong, brave Lisbon leaned forward over their clasped hands and kissed him.

This kiss was different than the one they'd shared the night before. Soft and light, yet still with that full richness he couldn't get enough of. She pulled back for a moment, and searched his face. He looked back at her openly, drinking in the sight of her. Then she kissed him once more, long and deep. This kiss too, was different yet from the previous ones.

He had the feeling Lisbon had a thousand different kisses. But that was all right. He was staying.

He would have time to learn them all.


End file.
